Let It Lie
by Ixi-Nox
Summary: In a program meant to extract the nightmares from your head, your worst fears come to life in the worst kind of way.
1. I'll Be Wherever You Go

**And so starts the first multi-chapter I've posted. This is old, like very very old. Not the writing (all shiny and 90% rewritten as of the last few days), but the idea has been rolling around my head and on documents for over a year. I started this fic with a horror plot in mind, but I'm not sure what it's going to turn into now! I have two more chapters entirely written at the moment and another that's about a third done, but I'm positive they're going to need hardcore editing, like this chapter did. It was significantly shorter when I started going through it, by about 3000 words actually.**

**This is of course an introductory chapter, with character/scene introductions and whatnot. The POV changes every chapter and becomes omnipotent later on when it becomes important to know what several characters are thinking per scene.**

**I'm tired of looking at this chapter! Please enjoy, expect an update in a week or so. c:**

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The first thing Wendy notices when she walks into the reception area is that Kelly Private Recovery Center looks nothing like a hospital. The walls of the waiting room are a shade of warm neutral beige. Brilliant leafy plants sit in red pots in the corners, and magazines lie in neat stacks on the glass coffee table in the centre of the room. On the receptionist's desk is a coffee maker, complete with a tray of ceramic mugs and cups of sugar, cartons of milk and cream. It doesn't look like a hospital more than the front desk of a hotel.

She walks over to the desk and pours herself a cup. When she takes a sip, she grimaces and adds more sugar, more milk. She doesn't drink a lot of coffee – she's scared of the idea of stained teeth – but she's anxious. Her mother already has her own coffee, and she carries it in a businesslike red carry cup. She approaches the front desk while Wendy puts her bags next to one of the chairs around the table. They look like they belong in the waiting room of a dentist's office. They're the only part of the room that would indicate that this isn't just a roadside bed-and-breakfast.

"Hello, I'm Mrs. Testaburger, I'm checking in my daughter Wendy," she says softly. Wendy smiles behind her coffee; it's the tone her mother adopts when she's nervous.

"Hello, Mrs. Testaburger. I've got Wendy right here," the receptionist answers, and she pulls out a sheet of paper from a file and places it on the desktop along with a pen. "If you'll just sign, giving us your consent to keep Wendy here for three weeks."

"Of course, of course," Mrs. Testaburger murmurs, scribbling her loopy signature on the dotted line. They've been over and over what Wendy will experience; daily therapy, available doctors, and family owned facilities. She is finally at ease with the idea that she won't see Wendy for the better part of a month. The only part of the deal she didn't go for: the fact that they didn't allow visitors until the time was up. According to the website, seeing family or friends could be a trigger, ruining everything that may or may not have been achieved in the time the patient is at the centre. Wendy, however, was excited to hear about that part; she's never been away from home by herself for more than half a week, and the prospect of it all is exciting.

The receptionist and her mother talk schematics, and Wendy stops listening, settling to pick up an older copy of _People_, which she doesn't read on a regular basis, but enjoys anyhow. She sips at her coffee and still finds it too strong for her tastes. The coffee she makes, when she makes it, is on the lighter side of a medium roast, and this is undoubtedly a dark roast. The bitter aftertaste echoes around her mouth unpleasantly. A clock in the corner clicks, and she picks her head up and out of her caffeine daydreams and looks at the time. It's 9:00 AM. She's half an hour earlier than she needs to be, but now she has the opportunity to watch everyone else come in, check in. Worried mornings and toss-and-turn nights mangle her appearance and confidence like nothing else, and now she's sitting in a faded pair of jeans (hole in the knee) and a hoodie that is her go-to for comfort. She doesn't look good, but others will look worse.

Her mother comes over, smiling in a tired sort of way. Wendy stands up, leaving her drink on the table. She wraps her arms around her mother's thin torso, nestles her head on her shoulder.

"I'll see you in April, Mum," she says into the fabric of her shirt.

"Oh, sweet girl, I'm gonna miss you," her mom whispers back.

"I'll miss you too." She feels her mom squeeze her tightly and then let go. When she backs up a step, Wendy can see the tears sparkling on her eyes.

"You'll be fine, then." Wendy nods. She kisses her cheek and gives her another hug.

"See you soon, Mum," Wendy says.

"Bye bye, Wendy." With that and tinkle of the chimes on the front door, her mother leaves, and suddenly she's alone, all alone, save the brunette behind the desk.

Wendy turns to the receptionist and says, "So should I just wait here?"

"Yes, dear. When the rest come, the doctor will come in and give you the grand tour. Just drink your coffee and relax a bit," she soothes. Then she extends a manicured hand over the table. "My name is Maria. I'm a nurse here."

"I'm Wendy," she says, even though Maria clearly knows who she is. Actually, she probably knows a good deal more than just her name, Wendy realizes, as she notices the files on the desk. The thought is not a comforting one. "If you're a nurse, why are you behind the desk?" she asks, just to get her mind off it.

"Just for today. We get a batch of people every month or so. We don't take single admissions. Our research shows that results are significantly better when you're in a familiar group the whole way through your treatment, as in nobody comes in, and nobody comes out while you're here."

"So that's why I had to wait for spring break to get here?"

"Yes, we were just finishing with the last group. Also, since your group is all high school age, we waited a few days for spring break to start. Because we're not a government organization, we have the ability to function on a less structured schedule," Maria says.

"I see. Well, I think I'll just sit down, then."

"Certainly. Go right ahead." She ducks her head back behind her computer screen after flashing Wendy a straight-toothed smile that sets dimples into her round cheeks. Wendy feels the corners of her mouth tug up in automatic response, and then sits back down with her coffee and bags. She has a backpack full of textbooks (the homework piles up when you miss the week after spring break) and a travel case full of clothes and necessities. In the front pocket of her bag, there's a cheap paperback novel about heroes and villains and dragons in forests, and she pulls it out and starts reading.

She's barely done the prologue when the door chimes ring and Sheila Broflovski walks in, looking neatly pulled together in that way people do when they're not sure what kind of impression they have to make. Her red hair is pulled back strictly, her jacket lint-free, though her face is softly lined with discomfort. She goes up to the desk and says she's Kyle Broflovski's mother, perhaps too loudly, but Wendy can't tell if it's because she's trying to look important of if she's nervous like her own mother. Gerald wanders in while Maria pulls out some permission forms, floating behind to let Sheila deal with all the important stuff. Kyle himself stumbles in a few seconds after, bumping the door awkwardly because his dad didn't hold it for him, dragging a suitcase on two wheels that seem to be more like theories than actual things, backpack slung over one shoulder. He props them next to her bags and drops down in the seat next to Wendy. A ragged smile traces his lips as he looks at her.

"Hey, Wendy," he says, leaning back in his chair, having taken in her tired appearance to satisfaction.

"Hi, Kyle." He looks much nicer than her, wearing dark jeans and long sleeve shirt that looks ironed, but the clothes are as far as he got with looking nice. His eyes are heavy-lidded, red in the corners, and he moves like a puppet, looking less aware of himself and more like someone is moving his arms for him.

"I've been up since four," he states, leaning back in the chair, "and I went to bed at midnight."

"At least that's four hours," Wendy says, sipping her coffee and looking at him over the rim of the mug.

"I went to bed at midnight," he says again, "But that doesn't mean I slept."

"Gotcha. Four seems like overkill, don't you think? If you've got everything packed, you just have to dress and eat. You could leave at seven o' clock and still get here on time."

"They had a ton of shit they wanted to go over, like emergency stuff. Mostly it was them talking and me waiting in the kitchen. God," he groans.

"It's only like a two-hour drive. Why four in the morning? I got up at 6:15."

"Fuck, ask them. They spent like, an hour before we left just squabbling and arguing about shit," he sighs, the corner of his lip twitching in the breath of a sneer. She cranes her neck around and sees Sheila scribbling her signature on a similar piece of paper to the one her own mother signed. Gerald watches passively.

"Your parents alright?" Wendy asks.

"They'll be fine," he says. Sheila turns from the desk with Gerald in tow and walks over to Kyle and hugs him tightly.

"You be good, bubbie. See you soon," she says kindly, kissing his cheek and then letting him go. A lipstick mark is left gracing his skin.

"Yup, bye Mom, bye Dad," he says, standing up. He hugs his dad and then watches them leave.

"Love you, Kyle!" she says over her shoulder, one foot out of the door.

"Love you guys too." He says it like it's a fact rather than a true memento of one's affections. Kyle is not good at affection, or feelings in general, honestly, except for with Stan, to whom he talks about his feelings constantly. When it gets right down to it, Kyle's not very good at human interaction at all. He has a blog that Wendy has bookmarked, and he thinks nobody but Stan knows about it, but Stan told Wendy, naturally, and now she regularly checks it to read his latest flame war or his most recent pet peeve, which he writes 2000-word posts about. She's gathered that he's better at internet interactions than real-life interactions.

"You have lipstick right here," Wendy says. She gestures to her own cheek.

"Oh. I hate her lipstick," Kyle says, and then scrubs his cheek with the side of his hand. He picks up a back issue of _Time _magazine and flips to the back. "I've read this already."

"These are all old," Wendy says, waving the _People_ issue she was reading.

"Figures. Where'd you get that?" he asks, pointing to her coffee.

"Up on the front desk."

"Really? Cool." He gets up and pours himself a cup, no sugar, no cream. She winces and wonders how that could possibly taste good when she can hardly stomach her own cup, choked with three scoops of sugar and enough half-and-half to strangle the strong flavour. However, Kyle is a much more seasoned coffee-drinker than she. Every morning, he's carrying a cup of it in a Starbucks tumbler, whereas she indulges maybe once a week, less, perhaps. And, by Stan's reports, she knows he practically lives on caffeine when it comes to finals.

"You're a mess," she remarks as he sits back down.

"Do I look that bad?" Kyle groans, self-consciously running a hand through his hair, thick and unruly. She becomes conscious of her own hair, bed-head wavy and not at all styled.

She shrugs and says, "You just look like you got up at four in the morning."

They sit quietly for a minute or so, Wendy paging through her novel and wondering if she should just read the ending and Kyle apathetically reading an article about what other countries are doing about the turmoil in Syria.

"When's everyone else gonna get here?" Kyle asks.

"Oh, I dunno. Supposedly, everyone should be here by nine thirty, but that means someone will get here at ten."

"Of course."

Wendy doesn't talk much to Kyle. They're good study buddies, both often competing for the top mark in the class, but Kyle is her boyfriend's best friend and they interact accordingly. She can't recall the last time she was in a room alone with Kyle, and when she thinks of their past conversations, they often are these three-to-six sentence snippets of statements, and usually started by her. Kyle talks a lot to among his friends, but she's not sure if she talks to them or at them. Stan talks of listening to Kyle for hours on end, but Kyle's other friends talk of having real discussions. Wendy herself is an extroverted person who's most comfortable in a throng of people, talking big ideas and personal opinions. Kyle's stunted conversational ability is frustrating to her.

They shuffle pages and sip coffee for five or ten minutes. Kyle refills his coffee once. Wendy has barely gotten through a third of hers. They both perk up when the bells jingle, Wendy taking a second to set her mug on the table. Kyle doesn't bother, however, and when he cranes his neck to see, his full mug dribbles over the lip and onto his pants. Wendy giggles at him and then looks back to the door, where Craig is holding it open with his shoulder and pulling in a duffle bag at the same time. He looks like he could use a hand, but she doesn't bother. When he does get inside, he drops his bags at a chair across from Wendy (his backpack makes a hard _thud_ that makes Wendy wince and wonder just how many textbooks he has in there) at stands like he's not sure what to do next. Thomas Tucker comes inside after a moment of unsure standing and looking around. Wendy doesn't know him, but she's seen him around town, sometimes with Craig's sister or Craig's mom, whom her mother is friends with. He's a tall, sturdy man with a slowly eroding spattering of red hair, and he looks like he was a lumberjack in his past life (he's a carpenter in this life, so she thinks she's on the right track). He kicks dirt off his boots and spares Wendy and Kyle an acknowledging glance before walking up to the front.

Once Mr. Tucker jots a signature down, he claps a hand on his son's shoulder. He seems to be on the brink of a speech, but it doesn't come out, and he just nods, his face an odd mixture of vague pride and sadness. She guesses they don't have the best relationship the world has seen.

"Don't you be gettin' into trouble now, boy," he says in a manner which is gruff and still manages to be soft-hearted at the same time.

"I won't," Craig says straight-faced. She can see where Craig gets his lack of empathy and general emotion. Mr. Tucker can't seem to manage a smile either.

"Alright, then. Good luck, Craig."

"Yup."

There's a moment in which Craig's dad debates whether to say something more, but Craig slides out of his grip and looks off to the side in a way that suggests there's nothing more to be said.

"Dad, go home."

"Yeah, you take care of yourself," he finishes, making his exit by pushing the doors open and swearing under his breath when his toe catches on the door sill. Craig sits down and rubs his temples. He also probably didn't sleep as well as he should have, but now she's assuming nobody slept well. There are circles hanging off his eyelids, darkish-purple. Kyle is still winning the best-dressed competition; Craig is wearing a variation of blue hoodie (he seems to have several) under a bomber jacket that he's had for years, which he's shrugging off. His jeans are crinkled. She supposes he just picked them up off the floor. His hair is lazily styled out of his eyes, like he got halfway through his usual routine and said, "Fuck it, that's good enough."

"Hey, Craig," she says.

"Hi."

"How was the trip up?" Kelly Private Recovery Centre is two hours roughly northbound. The actual plot of land is about ten acres, and from what she read on the website's history page, the original owner purchased it in 1906, but it was unused until 2002, when the hospital was built. It really looks like it was just squeezed right in between all the trees, this industrial thing, out of place in a thick forest that goes on forever. Remote is what they were going for when they built it, as the hospital has the resources to treat drug abuse, mental illness, and other such things that may involve runaway attempts. When you leave the building, where do you go?

"It didn't go well at all. My dad kept saying shit like 'If everything doesn't go okay while you're up there, you just call,' and 'I want you to know that your mother and I just want you to get better, and we'll do anything to etcetera'." He rolls his hand in the air to indicate that his father said much more than what he had relayed to them. "It might have been okay except for that we never talk. Ever."

"So two hours of clumsily offered parental love?"

"Mm hmm," Craig replies with another sigh.

"Sounds like fun," Wendy says, giggling inwardly.

"It wasn't." He leans back in his seat and glances idly around the room, looking at the prints on the walls and the pattern on the seats of the chairs. His eyes come to rest on Kyle.

"Don't you look lovely," he says with a hollow grin. His teeth are finally straight after years of braces. She's pretty sure he got them off just a month ago. The silver line of his retainer graces over his front teeth, a welcome change from the complicated elastics and multicoloured brackets she's seen him with through most of high school. Watching her classmates go through various orthodontic horrors has made her very thankful for the straight-toothed genes in her family.

"Shut the fuck up, Craig," Kyle mutters.

Craig flips him off, still grinning. "Blow me."

Wendy huffs and asks, "Do you two ever get along?"

"No," Craig says simply

"I would try!" Kyle says, looking harried. "This asshole wouldn't see any of it, though."

"Could you at least _try_ to be civil?" she suggests, exaggerated irritation slipping into her words.

"I try," Kyle says again. Craig gives her a look that suggests that she hasn't a clue what she's talk about, and then slouches back in his seat, pleased with himself.

The doors open for the third time that day, and they all look up. Butters and his parents walk in out of the frigid, blowing winds that come with the usual March weather. He follows his parent obediently up to the front desk and they check him in. His dad is in a trench coat that looks much too spiffy for little South Park, and his mother is wearing a wool coat down to her mid-thighs. They look like they have extravagant plans to celebrate the leaving of their son, and yet they both look worn around the edges. Her mother has said that the only reason they're still married is because divorcing is too expensive, too messy. Their goodbye is the shortest so far; either they got all the formalities over with while in the car, or they really couldn't care less that they were leaving their only child for nearly a month. It's as much as them staring hard at him, then Stephen Stotch saying, "I don't want to hear any trouble from you while you're here, young man. Do you understand me?"

"Yes sir."

"Are you going to get better?"

"Yes sir."

"Then we'll see you in three weeks."

"Alrighty, see you guys."

"Goodbye, Butters."

And then they just leave. No hug, no kiss, no I-love-you. They just leave. Wendy honestly has to look twice, from the door to Butters, back to the door, back to Butters, breath stolen by what could have qualified as the most loveless interaction she has ever seen between a boy and his parents. Even Craig's clumsy parting with his father was filled with undertones of parental love. But this had not a whisper, not even a sour breath of any sort of pride or affection or any implication that they gave a damn at all. They treated it like a business affair, not hateful or spiteful, but not personal either. She could have assumed it was somebody else's kid if she didn't know better. She wants to apologize on their behalf, but he's probably used to being treated like that. He probably doesn't mind.

"Butters, come and sit down," she says, patting the seat next to her. He smiles and does.

"Hey, guys," he greets them, pushing his bag under the chair.

"Hi, Butters," Kyle says, offering him a quick, haggard smile. Wendy notices his cup is nearly empty; hers is now half gone. Craig says a vague hello as well, probably in response to Wendy's request for civility. Craig and Butters aren't friends, but it's more out of the fact that they don't really have a reason to talk rather than being on unfriendly terms. She supposes Craig finds Butters irritating, and Butters finds Craig to be kind of an asshole, but Craig generally dislikes people, and people generally find Craig to be an asshole. None of it is personal. There's a second of silence before anyone says anything.

"Is this it? I mean, I thought there were a couple more of us coming here, like someone else or something. Am I the last one here?" Butters asks, twisting his fingers. A couple of years ago, it was bumping his knuckles. Then it was cracking them. She much prefers the finger twisting.

"No, we're still waiting on a couple of people," Kyle answers. He downs the last sip of his coffee and gets up for another refill.

"Who?"

"Stan and Kenny, I think?" He looks over at Wendy for confirmation. She nods.

"Think they'll get here in seven minutes?" Wendy asks, raising her brows.

"Oh, hopefully. Gosh, I sure hope they're not in trouble."

"Aren't they always?" Craig says. He extrudes him phone from his pocket and starts tapping away at the screen.

"Don't be a dick, Craig," Kyle huffs.

Craig gives him a sidelong glance. "No need to so pissy, Broflovski. She said be civil."

Kyle doesn't respond to that, instead taking a two-second-long sulk at the coffee pot. When he comes back, he walks carefully to avoid spilling it a second time. He shoots Craig a sneer which Craig returns before Kyle sits down. Wendy rolls her eyes, and then turns to Butters with a tired smile.

"Nice having these two around."

"No kidding. You said Ken was coming?"

"Yeah? Why do you ask?"

"Nothing, it's just that Ken's kinda good at subduing Craig," he says rather frankly. He glances over at Craig, who's looking up and seems a bit like he's not sure whether to be nonchalant or upset.

"When'd you guys start being friends anyway?" she asks pointedly.

"I don't know," he says, and it's obvious he does, but she doesn't feel much like prodding.

Butters looks out the window and his face breaks into a bright smile, the sort that is his trademark. Butters always had a good face for smiling. His eyes light up like nothing else, his teeth sit on display in their straight, white glory (one year of braces; all he had was a slight overbite. She gets the feeling Craig resents this).

"Hey! Stan and Kenny are here!"

"At the same time?" Kyle asks, looking out the window as well.

"Yeah! See, they're just getting their stuff now!"

Wendy sits up and shakes her hair out of her eyes. She's been looking forward to having Stan with her through this time. Maybe it will make the whole experience better - she isn't expecting it to be bad, per say, but he's nice to have around,

Stan and Kenny bustle in, Kenny with a backpack and oddly new looking duffle bag, Stan with two duffle bags, one big and one small. They look okay, maybe about the same as her. Stan's hair is sticking up everywhere, and Kenny looks a little shabby, like he always does, in faded jeans sporting a hole in the knee and a hoodie that has a sharpie all over it to hide the stains. Kenny goes up to Maria; Stan pushes the bags under the seat next to Butters and comes around the line of chairs to kiss Wendy.

"Hey," he says as their lips part.

"Hey. How are you?"

"Bit tired, not too bad otherwise." He gives her a lingering, loving look before greeting everyone else. "Hey, guys."

"Hi," Kyle says, and for a second Wendy wonders if he's jealous that Stan greeted his girlfriend before his Super Best Friend. She doubts it; after all, he's had to put up with their on-and-off relationship since fourth grade. Stan seems aware of it, though, and he sits down next to Kyle.

"Heya, Stan!" Butters says enthusiastically.

Craig doesn't even bother to say hello, but neither does Stan. It's no secret that they've hated each other since fourth grade. They're courteous about it, simply choosing to avoid each other rather than make a scene about it. Stan is non-confrontational, steering clear of conflict to the best of his ability, and Craig only attacks when threatened. Put together, they're fairly benign; Craig says nothing as long as Stan doesn't.

Stan's mom and dad come in while Stan makes his greetings, looking intentionally relaxed. They probably spent the whole drive talking about how this is okay and not a thing to worry about. Stan's parents are good people; Sharon, an observant but respectful mother, keeps her nose out of her son's business while somehow still knowing all about it; and Randy, off the wall at the best of times, but cool in that he offers Wendy a beer when she comes over after school and always makes homemade pizza when Stan has friends over. They sign the papers, then walk over to Stan. Randy sighs, dropping his hands on Stan's shoulders.

"So this is it. Well, we're going to go now, Stan, you get better, okay?"

"I'll-"

"There's forty bucks in the side pocket of the little bag, and a box of the old 'French letters' in the big bag," Randy says with a wink, cutting Stan off.

"Dad! What do you think I _do_ in my spare time?" Stan sputters, face reddening. Wendy just wonders why he knows such an obsolete slang term for condoms. Knowing Randy, he probably googled it, just to find the perfect awkward thing to say at the big goodbye. He's like that, making a hobby out of making Stan uncomfortable. She's sure he does it on purpose.

"Randy! You didn't actually!" Sharon says in horror, pushing her husband away from Stan.

"But Sharon, it's three whole weeks and there's only one girl here and-"

"Randy, we talked about this! I swear to god that you're going to be the death of me!" she groans. She shoves past Randy and opens Stan's bag and after some rustling around, she actually does pull out a box of condoms. She tosses them to Randy to hug Stan tightly.

"Have a good time, sweetie, we'll see you soon," she says, petting his hair down and taming the cowlicks in it.

"I will. Love you, Mom," he answers, letting her go.

"Love you too, sweetheart. Bye."

"Bye Mom, bye Dad," he says, waving at Randy.

"See you, son! Don't go 'conceiving trouble'!" he shouts as Sharon drags him out. Wendy can hear Sharon muttering _I can't take you anywhere_ under her breath. Once they've left, Stan looks at Kenny.

"You need a parent signature, dude."

Kenny looks over his shoulder and grins. "I brought a signed note, but they're calling my mom to check that I didn't stow away here against her will."

Maria hangs up the phone after a minute or so, and looks at Kenny. "Everything looks fine, Kenneth-"

"Kenny," he corrects quickly.

"Kenny. Have a seat."

"Thank you, ma'am," he drawls, and picks up his bag. He drops it and his backpack next to Craig's chair, and then goes around to the other side, where Wendy and the others sit. He starts with Kyle, who's sitting closest to the end of the line of chairs if you bypass Stan, who she supposes Kenny's seen enough of for now. He digs his face into Kyle's mountain of curls.

"Hi Kyle," he muffles.

"Hi, Kenny." Kyle is unalarmed and doesn't look up from the hangnail he was beginning to discuss with Stan. Stan snickers.

"Did you know I'd fuck your hair if it was a person?"

"I think you'd fuck my hair regardless," he says.

"Damn straight, man," Kenny laughs, moving down the line to Wendy.

"Hey, Wendy," he says, kissing the top of her head.

"Hi," she says, smiling. Stan looks off the side. He doesn't mind Kenny doing that to her – Kenny's not the kind of person to date your ex, let alone your current girlfriend – but he's inexplicably uncomfortable with it, and when she's asked him about it, he's shrugged.

"Butters," Kenny greets, scruffing his hair roughly.

"Heya, Kenny," Butters says, grinning.

"Sorry 'bout the hair, sugar, it's just too fun," he says, petting it back into place. He fixes the last flyaways and heads back to where he placed his bags.

Craig sticks a leg up to keep Kenny from coming closer to him. "I don't want a kiss, asshole," he says, but not meanly.

Kenny grabs his leg and kisses his shoe. "Sorry, sunshine," he says, letting go. The chair to Craig's right becomes Kenny's home, and he sits down sideways in it, placing his shoes in Craig's lap. Craig looks less than impressed, but not surprised.

"Oh my god, guys, that was legit the longest car ride I've been in since that field trip to in Utah in seventh grade. Goddamn, I gotta get out more," Kenny says, cracking his knuckles. Wendy winces.

"Well done, Kenny," Kyle says.

"I know, right? I didn't get carsick or anything." He looks over at Craig's phone, craning his neck to get a view that isn't obstructed by glare. "What'cha doing?"

"I'm playing Solitaire," Craig says.

Kenny groans. "Do you know that you're the most boring person on the planet? Do you know that? There are a bazillion apps in the world and you're playing fuckin Solitaire." He hesitates for a beat, and calls towards the desk. "Excuse my French. I'm sorry."

"It's alright, Kenny," Maria replies.

He looks back to Craig. "So do you know you're so boring?"

"Yeah, cuz you keep telling me, asshat," Craig says.

"Why were you with Stan, Kenny?" Wendy asks, leaning forward in her seat.

"Because he's sexy."

Stan blinks at him. Kenny laughs, light and lilting.

"No, my mom didn't feel like driving me, Dad was hungover, and Kev would only drive me if I paid for gas, which I couldn't. So Stan offered to take me up with them. But Stan is also very sexy and an excellent backseat-mate. You are one lucky girl, Wends."

"He groped me the whole way up," Stan groans. "And you wanna know what my parents did? Nothing. My dad said 'Please don't get gay in the car, thanks boys,' once, but oh my god, what kind of dad says that?"

"Randy does," Wendy says, looking his way. "Poor baby."

"Hey, I don't get to cuddle, like, _ever_. Such is the bachelor life," Kenny says, shrugging. "Hey Craig, you wanna cuddle?"

Craig doesn't dignify this with an answer. He keeps tapping at the screen of his Android like Kenny's not there. He hasn't bothered to move his feet, but instead works around them.

"Goddamn, Craig, throw me a bone here. I'm just a poor boy angling for a hug."

"Go hug Butters, he's good at that sucky stuff," Craig says. He clicks his phone off and stows it away.

"Did you get bored with Solitaire?" Kenny asks, wiggling a foot.

"I lost four times in a row."

"Do you wanna cuddle now?"

"No, you're all bony. You'd probably stick my eye out with your elbow or something."

"That's cold, man. Real cold."

"You'll survive," Craig says, patting his feet sympathetically. Kenny frowns and pokes his hand away with the worn toe of his shoe.

"Excuse me?" a voice comes from behind them. They all snap their head up to the source; Kenny's feet slide off of Craig, and Stan surfaces from his deep conversation with Kyle (she wasn't listening, but Raisin Bran kept popping up). A greying man in an olive green shirt and black pants is standing by a set of frosted glass doors next to the desk. He adjusts his tie and smiles when he sees he has their attention. He continues. "Please grab your bags and head back over here."

Wendy exchanges confused looks with the others, and one by one, they begin to pick up travel bags and backpacks and walk over to the man, forming a small cluster around him. He nods at them.

"My name is Dr. Kelly. I'm the owner and the head doctor and therapist at Kelly Private Recovery Center. If you'll follow me, I'll lead you to your quarters, and once you've dropped your bags off, I'll give a tour around the hospital."

Wendy nods, looking at the man closer. He appears to be in his mid-forties, maybe fifties, and by the gold band around his finger, he's married. His face is clean-shaven, his hair mostly there, though thinning. Around his green eyes are folds of crow's feet, around his mouth, smile lines. Perched on his nose is a pair of wire frame glasses. He has a warm, friendly way about him, from the fatherly face to the potbelly. She decides Dr. Kelly doesn't look like a man she can hate.

Turning around, he pushes open the doors and leads them down a long hallway painted the same beige of the receptionist's office. There are unremarkable prints of trees and forests hanging on the walls, and a nondescript grey carpet like the kind you find in kindergarten classrooms.

"This is just the main hallway. It leads down to the centre of the hospital, where the therapy rooms and your rooms are," he says, floating a hand up as if to further glorify what was in plain sight. Wendy notices he has a slight limp on his right side, but she doesn't say anything. She lets herself fall back to where Stan walks, and twines her fingers through his. He smiles and squeezes them lightly. Dr. Kelly talks a bit about the history of the place, giving them the short version of the page she read on the website. She zones out and reads some of the inscriptions on Kenny's hoodie, most of which are names and dates; "Stan the Man!" "Kenneth Jesus McCormick" "Señor Hitler's [something scribbled out] big bones" "March 22 is a good day to fuck bitches, man!" There are song lyrics here and there; "Waves knock me down, I'll get up again." "Be young, be dope, be proud, like an American." "Don't stop, make it pop!" There's a limerick of sorts: "So I'm writing poetry / and it's about geometry / Triangles and squares / and clean shapes in pairs / Fuck this number artistry." She wonders who wrote it.

The hallway ends and they turn left, leading to a hallway with doors on either side. None of the doors are exactly across from each other; they're diagonally placed. There are lever door knobs on each of the white doors, each equipped with an outside lock. A small number lies at eye level on each one, going from one to fifteen.

"These are your rooms. They're nothing special, just a place to sleep. You won't be spending much time in them. Go ahead, they're unlocked," he says to Butters, whose hand is on one of the levers. He clicks it open and they all peer inside. They're fairly simple rooms; a round light attached to the center of the ceiling, two double size beds, a small table next to each bed (a timetable, a lamp, and list of rules lies on top), a closet, a bathroom; catalogue-order accommodation.

"As you can see, you'll be in pairs. Some people find the whole experience somewhat scary or lonely, so we're using the buddy system to make sure you always have someone to talk to."

"Oh. I don't suppose we can pick our roomies," Kyle says, tone falling flat.

"We've already done that," Dr. Kelly says, giving Kyle a sorry smile. He fumbles around in his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. "We asked your parents to suggest who you might like to room with." Kyle perks up at that. "Let's see; Kyle, you're with Stan in room one, Wendy and Butters in room two, and Craig and Kenny in room three."

Wendy sends Butters a quick smile. She won't mind rooming with him; Butters is quiet and unobtrusive, and if she knows him, he'll probably just want to go to sleep. She'd have preferred to be with Stan, but she can see the reasoning behind not putting her there. Sexual shenanigans are not a target point of the hospital's curriculum, she assumes.

"Wendy doesn't have to have a room by herself?" Stan objects. When all eyes fall on him, he flushes slightly. "I mean, like, you don't have rules against putting her with a guy?"

"No. There are cameras in every room, and there will be people watching you all night. We've assured that nothing will happen that we won't know about," he says firmly.

Wendy glances at Stan, who's gone quite red, and at Butters, who has also turned a bit pink.

"Now," Dr. Kelly says, breaking the silence, "go ahead and put your stuff away."

Stan and Kyle stay in the room they're all standing in and drop their things on their respective beds. The other four file out and move down the hall to their rooms. Wendy walks into the room diagonal from Stan's and picks a bed, shedding her backpack and hoisting her bag onto it. Butters follows her in and heaves his bag on the perfect sheets, hopelessly wrinkling them. Wendy picks up the list of rules and has a scan over them.

_1. Please do not bring food from the dining room into the bedrooms._

_2. Respect your neighbours; stay quiet._

_3. Doors locked at 11:00 PM. Please refrain from making too much noise and watching television after this time._

_4. Please do not bring others into your room; your quarters are for you and your roommate only._

_5. No drugs, alcohol, or sex. Violation of this rule will result in an immediate transfer into a high-security room BY YOURSELF. This is a treatment center; indulgence of any of these things could be detrimental to your success in this program. _

_6. Avoid spending too much time in your room by yourself. Hiding away from your companions during free time is not recommended for success in the program._

_7. What you do in this room is not secret. Center staff monitor rooms at all times._

"Great," she sighs.

"Uh, Wendy?" Butters says suddenly. He's wringing his fingers again.

"Hmm?" Wendy turns around.

"I just want you to, uh, know that I ain't gonna, well, come onto you or anything," he mumbles anxiously. She feels her heart twist up, because the assumptions he makes in saying this sentence are so wrong, and the thought of _Butters_ of all people hitting on Wendy with the intention of making her uncomfortable is unthinkable. The way he thinks of himself, so quick to let all of his self-esteem and confidence run out the bottom makes her throat swell. She has pitied a lot of things in her life, but nothing is more pitiful than Butters reassuring Wendy that he's not going to hurt her.

"Oh, Butters, Stan was just being Stan. I know you're not."

"O-okay, then. Why d'ya think he thought that?"

"Because he was confused about the rules, and because he can be jealous," Wendy explains, leaning on the wall. "Really jealous." There have been times where she's worked on projects with other guys because the teacher picked partners and Stan's gotten jealous. She's _talked_ to guys and make Stan jealous. She's talked to fucking teachers and made Stan jealous. And still, he's unaggressive. He glares, but he keeps mind straight.

"Well, that's just weird," Butters laughs quietly.

"Yeah, well, that's Stan. Come on, let's go." Butters nods and they go back to the hall, where everyone else is standing. She moves next to Stan again, and he gives her a sorry half-smile before he finds her fingers again.

Dr. Kelly grins. "Well, let's go see the rest of this place. Follow me," he says, and walks briskly by the rest of the doors. Wendy watches the numbers slide from three to five to fifteen as they pass them. She wonders if the hospital is ever full, or if it's always small groups of six or eight. This gets her thinking about the money the center is making; if the price is 7 000 dollars (she's not certain of that, but she heard more than five and less than ten) and the hospital has say, eight people every month (again, a total guess), they could be making 56 000 a month and 67 2000 a year. She doesn't know if that's a lot when you talk about hospital cost and maintenance, but god! It sounds like a lot to her. She knows her health insurance covered most of her cost, but she wonders about the others. Kenny, for example; there's no way he has health insurance like she does. The questionable location of his funds is something she decides she might not want to think about.

"Now this," Kelly says as they enter a large room, "is where you'll be eating. There's the kitchen over on the far side there, where food will be set up buffet-style on the counter. Breakfast is served at seven-thirty to eight. Lunch will start at eleven-forty five and goes on to twelve-forty five. Dinner starts at six and ends at seven. This is so you can all get meals even if your therapy goes overtime."

There are scattered affirmative noises. Kelly carries on past the dining room, stepping gingerly on his bad leg. What's it from? This time, there isn't a hallway, just a large, elegant pair of doors leading to another large room with couches, a TV, bookshelves, and tables. The TV has an impressive stereo system, apparently with the idea of music in mind. A tall stack of CDs sit on a rack. A counter with a hot water dispenser and coffee maker connects to one wall. Next to the bookshelf is a shelf that has blank paper, lined and unlined, sitting in neat piles, along with card stock in various colours and several boxes of pencils, pencil crayons, and markers. There's some artsy sort of paper there as well, and some paints (acrylic and watercolour) that are either new of just unused. There's a printer hooked up to a clunky Windows computer. Above the monitor is a sign that says "NO WIFI. FOR WORD PROCESSING."

"This is the common area, where you'll be spending your free time. This is basically like the hospital's living room, there's just a bunch of stuff for you guys to amuse yourselves with. Out those doors are the gardens, where you may go if you please," he says, gesturing to a set of sliding glass doors leading out to a grassy area. Wendy looks through them and sees an empty flowerbed that might look nicer once the weather gets warmer.

"Now then," he continues, to the other side of the room to an open hallway, "down this hall are the therapy rooms. There are six of them, but we'll only be using three. Each of you will have an assigned therapist to talk to, and once every few days, you'll come talk to me. Okay?"

"What about down there?" Wendy asks, pointing to another hallway connecting to the room. She assumes there's a door at the end, but the hallway turns right sharply, and she can't see it.

"That leads down to the treatment area. You'll have therapy every day and treatment when we see fit."

She thinks about that. What could the difference even be? Isn't the therapy treatment? "What's treatment consist of?" she asks. Dr. Kelly's lips turn up in a bit of a crooked smile, like it's a silly question, like she shouldn't be asking it.

"You'll see. It targets your exact problems, so it's different for everyone." He looks around the group. "Are there any more questions?"

"Yeah," Kenny says. "Are there cameras here too?"

"There are cameras in every room, Kenny," Dr. Kelly says. Hearing him say Kenny's name strikes her the same she was struck when she thought of Maria knowing her name, her birthday, why she's even here to begin with. Kelly must know all these things as well, but still, it feels weird to know he knows all their names when they haven't even introduced themselves.

Kenny pulls a face and pauses for a bit, and then says, "Cameras are kinda creepy, dude. I thought we were going for 'non-threatening' and 'harmonious atmosphere' or some shit. Aw, not again. Pardon my French."

"Oh, don't worry about it," he laughs as Kenny looks at the ground, a bit flustered. "The people who supervise the cameras are nurses who work here, not stalkers." He glances at his watch, an expensive-looking gold piece of work, and smiles at them. "I have to prepare for your first meetings with me. The intercom will call you down to me when I'm ready for you. My office is the far door on the left. My name is on it, it's hard to miss. For now, you can relax here." With that, he turns around and leaves the room, walking down the hallway to his office. His footsteps fade as he walks further away, and when the office door clicks shut, the room is silent.

They exchange six nervous glances. Finally, Kenny sighs.

"Well, if you don't mind my honest opinion, I'd say we're fucked." He looks around for agreement, the corners of his lips twitching upwards when a couple of people nod. Wendy's heart beats painfully against her chest. Dr. Kelly still doesn't look like a man she could hate. She's scared, but she's not upset.

"So what do we do until he calls us down?" Stan asks, not really looking for an answer. He receives shrugs. Craig pulls out his phone and frowns.

"That's weird. I can't get service," he says, tapping on the screen as if it would help.

"We're in the middle of nowhere. You really thought you could get service?" Kenny asks, raising an eyebrow.

"I was texting Clyde in the reception area. I had service until like ten minutes ago." They go quiet.

"There's no WiFi, either. See," Wendy points to the sign.

"I saw that. Shit, when they said 'no outside communication', I didn't really think they'd actually, well, enforce it. Like how they say no texting in school and everyone still does it," Craig says. "Now that I say it that way, it sounds really stupid. Of course they'd enforce it. This isn't school, it's a fucking hospital. Jesus."

"I noticed you brought your phone even though the site explicitly said not to bring your phone," Kyle says, taking the opportunity to make a dig at Craig, quite unnecessarily, Wendy thinks.

"Shut the fuck up, Kyle. I thought everyone would," Craig snaps.

"So we're fucking marooned here," Stan says. "Fantastic." He lets go of Wendy to shove his hands in his pockets.

"I'm sure it ain't that bad," Butters says cautiously. "If we needed to contact somebody that bad, I'm sure they'd let us."

"Because they're so _lovely_ that way," Craig says, spitting the word.

"Okay assholes, standing here and moaning about it won't get nothing done," Kenny says, punching Craig's shoulder. "Let's make a game plan. You know, figure out how we're gonna survive here, because I'm looking at what's coming . . ." He pauses to chuckle a bit, but not humorously. "And I gotta say, man, it looks shitty."

"So what do you suggest?" Kyle asks. He sounds as though he has little faith in Kenny as an advisor. She has to admit he's not her first choice either when it comes to a situation like this.

"Honestly, I think we should wait," she says before Kenny can open his mouth. "Nothing truly bad has happened, right? He told us there are cameras everywhere, but god, why wouldn't there be? This is a recovery center. They need to monitor the people. We're not here because it's a fun little game; we're here because we have an anxiety disorder that interferes with our day-to-day lives. This is a shitty place, but we've all got shitty minds. We should give it a couple of days, or at least 'til the end of this meeting or whatever with Dr. Kelly before we start calling shots."

She's applauded by a heavy silence.

"Shit, she's right, you know," Stan says. "Let's wait."

"Fine," Kenny says. "We'll wait. But man, if he pulls a knife on us when we walk in, I'm kicking your ass in the afterlife, Wendy."

"Whatever, Kenny. It'll be fine."

He sighs, and he goes to say something, but he closes his mouth instead. "I dunno if it's nerves or what," he mumbles, avoiding her eyes, "but I just feel like hitting something, as hard as I can. Just fuckin whaling on it."

These words hit her hard, but it's beginning to feel like every other sentence uttered hits her hard. This whole place is hitting her hard. She sighs and reaches up to his hair, scratching his scalp gently with the tips of her fingernails. It brings the breath of a smile to his face, one of those quiet, automatic smiles. She feels like she's going to have to hold onto these smiles.


	2. I Bend In Ways That I Never Knew

**A little late, but whatever, I'm over it. The story should pick up some from here, and this chapter is a lot of talk but it's a necessary transition just so nothing starts happening too fast. Point out mistakes or errors if you spot any, I edit my own stuff and I do miss little silly things from time to time. Thank you thank you for reading!**

* * *

It's well over an hour before anyone is called down.

They settle on their own accord. Wendy is drawn to the bookshelf with its expansion of books that seems better than the one she brought along, and she settles on the couch. Kenny curls up in a large chair that matches the couches and drops his head on the arm. Stan and Kyle join Wendy on the couch and they play Cat's Cradle with Stan's shoelace. Craig sits at the other couch and plays Solitaire. Butters sits at a table for a minute or two, but he finds the chairs uncomfortable and the fact that everybody else has defaulted to the couches lonely, so he moves to Craig's couch, but on the far side. Craig looks up to notice him, and then looks back to his phone. Butters wishes he had brought his iPod with him, but it's in a bag in his room, and he's not sure he's allowed to go back and get it.

He likes the formation of the seating. The couches are both tilted inward to face a nicely sized TV in the center. Good for movie nights. The fact that he can see everyone's faces just by looking up is nice. No strenuous neck-stretching.

Sometimes he amazes himself by just how much time can pass when you don't think about time. He leans his head on his hand and looks out the big glass doors and he thinks about the weather, the lawn, the trees and how they just haven't budded yet. He'd like to go outside, but every time he works up the nerve to go up to the door and walk outside for a breath of fresh air, some stupid thought pops into his head to discourage him.

_(okay I'll get up right now oh it's pretty cold outside actually guess I won't)_

Nearly fifteen minutes go by just working up and letting go of the nerve to get up from the couch. There's a clock on the wall behind him; he has to turn around to see it, but the minor energy expended beats talking to Craig, who quite frankly scares him. He sees the counter and its refuge of hot water and tea and coffee. This new distraction, with its reward of a hot beverage to scald his tongue and pass the time with, is where he redirects his attention. He'd stand up and get some, but he hates the way everyone jerks up to see what he's doing when they hear him shift on the cushions. Standing up might give them all heart attacks. The way this is going (okay get up now! oh never mind) makes him decide that he should make a goal for himself: the next time somebody talks, he'll get up and make some tea.

It's amazing how slow time can go when you're waiting for something to happen.

He tries to go back to thinking about the weather, but he can't, because every single though is harmonized by _gee, is somebody going to talk or what_. He switches to making lists; all the Miley Cyrus songs he can think of; sexual slang for every letter of the alphabet; his favourite books, in order. But every list disintegrates, working alright up until the fourth item or so (the sexual slang list goes on a little longer) and then just fading away.

"No, Kyle, I don't know what you're trying to do, but it's Diamonds, _then_ Cat's Eye," Stan says suddenly, untangling string from Kyle's fingers.

"I know, Stan, I just made a mistake, okay? God," Kyle huffs, taking the string back. "I'll start."

That's Butters' cue. He gets up and walks to the counter before he has the time to be insecure.

"Hey dude, where you going?" Kenny asks, picking his head up.

"I'm, uh, getting some tea, cuz you know, there's a hot water thingy back here," Butters says, feeling as awkward as the words fall out.

"Oh. Is there coffee?"

Butters glances over, and then says, "Yup."

"You wanna get me some, sugar? One scoop, splash of milk," he says, smiling lazily.

"Sure, Ken," he says, and takes two mugs. He drops a peppermint tea bag in one and fills the other with coffee and milk, and to instruction, one scoop of sugar.

Sugar. The nickname changes hands sometimes, sometimes referring to Butters and then to Kenny's girlfriends, sometimes to Wendy, but it seems recently he's pretty well claimed the name. Though he's not exclusively "sugar", Kenny doesn't really use the name with anyone else. Not that Butters minds at all; he likes the names Kenny tosses around. They make him feel truly included, liked. He knows there aren't any romantic behind them, but they still make him feel a little giddy.

Butters used to fancy Kenny liked him. He's not sure there was ever any substance behind it, but the way Kenny drops pet names and lacks a sense of personal space always made him wonder. Nowadays, he's sure it was just him being a little too hopeful, because Kenny flirts with everyone, from his friends to his friends' parents (always vague enough to ensure they don't take him too seriously), waitresses and salespeople.

He carries Kenny's coffee to him and receives a thank-you and a smile. Kenny takes a long drink of it, and then hands it to Craig to hold.

"Come sit, Butters, I wanna play with your pretty hair," Kenny says, changing positions so he's sitting cross-legged in the chair, knees against the sides, motioning to the carpet in front of him.

Butters moves to his assigned spot and tips his head back a little. Kenny's fingers work into his hair, and soon enough they begin twisting and kinking the long hair on top, petting the short bits on the side and rubbing his scalp gently.

"Swear to god, I'd think you were a couple if I didn't know better," Craig says, drinking Kenny's coffee.

"Don't hate, man," Kenny says.

"I'm not. You just look really gay. Just saying."

"You a homophobe?"

"No, Kenny. Jesus Christ," Craig groans.

"You sure?" Butters can hear the smile in his voice; he's teasing.

"We wouldn't really be friends if I was."

"Are you dating Kenny?" Kyle says, looking up, a mess of string on his fingers. "Not like we haven't seen it coming for like, ever."

"Just like we're all waiting for you to admit you're fucking Stan. Or Stan's fucking you," Craig adds.

"We're not fucking!"

"Nor are we dating."

"Dude, it's my turn," Stan says, pawing at the shoelace.

Kyle sneers and turns back to Stan. He mutters under him breath, _Craig fucking Tucker Jesus fuck why do I bother,_ and Stan murmurs back something quiet and encouraging. He looks at Wendy, but she's immersed herself in a Tom Clancy novel. Kenny looks back down to Butters' head and continues scratching his hair. Butters turns his head and notices Craig has more or less claimed the coffee he made for Kenny.

Thirty some-odd minutes have gone by since the doctor left them to themselves, and Butters can't say he hasn't been noticing every minute that's passed. Even in his dreamy time-eating thoughts of the world beyond the glass door would be punctuated by _hey, a minute has passed._ He can't see the clock from this position, but he can make a pretty decent guess.

What he honestly thinks would pass the time best is conversation, but the air in the room doesn't invite pleasantries. Wendy has the right idea, finding a book and settling in. When she looks up, she probably thinks, _whoa, half an hour gone by already?_ Kenny too, creating activity for his hands. Time flies when you're having fun.

He wonders why any culture ever bothered with torture devices anyway. Being forced to watch every minute pass is the worst punishment he can imagine. He imagines a man alone in a box with nothing but a clock, ticking away; unfathomable.

Kenny hands run down to the nape of his neck and he can't help but sigh. If he were a man in a box with another pair of hands running through his hair, he thinks it might be a little more tolerable.

"Hey Craig, what time is it?" Wendy asks, laying her book on its pages.

"10:24," he says.

"How long have we been here?"

"Bit less than forty minutes, I think."

She groans and leans back in the cushions. "God, is he going to take forever or what? Jesus Christ, how long does it take to organize some files?"

"Read your book, Wendy," Stan says, Candles position suspended.

"Tom Clancy is so boring, though. Like, you know when you talk about the legal system in school and how fucking _boring_ it is? Now, think of that, but imagine reading about it for nine hundred pages."

"So pick a new one," Stan says with a shrug. Kyle picks up strings and creates Manger position.

"I'm so done with reading. I can't focus anymore." She leans on the arm of the couch and buries her head in her crossed arms.

Butters looks over to her, with her flushed face and messy hair, and just wants to tell her it'll be alright. But getting up to console her would mean leaving these lovely hands, so he settles for sipping his tea and making a sympathetic face.

"So whattaya suppose he's gonna talk about?" Kenny says to anyone who will answer.

"I've been trying to think of it," Kyle says. "I think it'll probably be like what our feelings towards being here are, how we're reacting so far, you know. Shit like that. I think it might be long, though."

"Long as in fifteen minutes or long as in an hour?"

"More like half an hour, I think."

Butters realizes he's hardly been thinking about the meeting with Dr. Kelly at all. He's been waiting for something to happen, but unlike Kyle, he hasn't been preoccupying himself with the questions Kelly might ask, the answers he might give. If he had to pin an emotion to the whole thing, he might go with impatient. Everything just takes _so long_.

"So, you've been rehearsing answers?" Kenny asks.

"I've been trying, but it's hard to concentrate. And it's really hard to think of answers to serious questions when Stan's breathing down my neck to take the strings."

"It's my shoelace, man, show some respect," Stan throws in.

"God, this is a really shitty place we're in," Kenny sighs. "I'm just waiting for tomorrow."

"Tomorrow will be worse," Craig says.

"That's the not the point, asshole. Times passes. Someday, I'll be looking back on this day, and that's what I'm looking forward to. Being able to look back," Kenny retorts. Butters guesses it's going to be the deepest thing he says all day (all week?). But who knows, maybe he's deeper with Craig. He wonders what they talk about sometimes; maybe they both have these philosophical sides and they debate life and death; maybe they just talk about how late they stayed up last night and how much they hate History; maybe they don't talk much at all. God, who fucking knows.

Between these thoughts and the hands that push his hair in circles, time creeps by.

"What time is it, Craig?" Kenny asks. He's stopped playing with Butters' hair because of his fingers cramping up, but Butters is still sitting there, head leaning lightly on Kenny's legs, now uncrossed because they were cramping too.

There's the quietest click of his phone waking up (he ditched it some minutes ago in favour of attempting to take a nap), and then, "10:43."

"Wow. It's been pretty much an hour now, hasn't it?"

"Mm."

"Think it's gonna take much longer?"

"Fucked if I know," Craig says, studying a fingernail and scratching the skin around it experimentally. "Getting impatient?"

"Of course," Kenny murmurs, flopping forward and dropping his chin on Butters' head. "You think it's gonna be much longer, Butters?"

"Ah, I dunno. Impossible to tell, I think," he replies.

"Goddamn."

A beat of silence, and then: _"Could Butters Stotch please come down to Dr. Kelly's office, Butters Stotch, thank you."_ It's over an intercom that Butters didn't know existed before looking skyward nearly fast enough to cause whiplash and seeing a speaker mounted on the ceiling. He knocks Kenny's chin in the process and Kenny shoots back in his seat.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Kenny yelps, hands suspended and clueless as to where to land. Everyone else jerks and their eyes go wide, but beyond a gasp or two, Kenny is the only audible reaction. Stan has ruined his intricate string model, having been in the middle of a transfer and tugging too hard out of surprise, and Kyle is looking around in alarm, the ruins of Stan's shoelace on his fingers.

Butters rips his look from the intercom on the ceiling and looks at the floor, saying nothing. A vacuum forms in his throat and robs him of saliva and breath and words altogether.

They clue in and stare in at him. The stares soften from panic to sorry sympathy.

"Oh, shit," Wendy says shakily, curling her hands on her jeans. Butters can feel his eyes burn with the onset of tears.

"You're first, man," Stan says blankly.

Kenny leans forward and wraps his arms around Butter's neck. He kisses the top of his head quickly (and poof! a stupid, pointless explosion of nervous butterflies) and lingers for a second before letting go, his arms still loose around Butters' shoulders. "It'll be okay, sugar. Nothin's gonna hurt you."

There are no words that can be said; Butters' entire vocabulary – from the handful of long, beautiful words he drops like bright coins to the short connectors that piece together his thoughts – has retreated to the sides of his head and are falling out of his ears in a waterfall of language escaping like air out of a punctured balloon. The two that remain are awful, shitty words; _first_ and _fuck_.

_(first fuck fuck fuck first)_

And he chokes out, "Move." The word is forced and feels awkward.

"Right," Kenny says, and his arms slide off and into his lap. His legs follow and he sits with his knees up against his chest.

Butters rises to his feet and stumbles away from his spot on the floor and takes a minute to look at everyone while he remembers how to walk. Kenny's eyes are saturated with worry, as are Wendy's. Stan is full of fear, Kyle still looks alarmed, and Craig seems uneasy, his eyes darting around like there's much more going on inside his head than he's letting on.

His legs are functional, finally, and he steps away from the little nests they've made to find his way to the office. He steps around the couches and towards the hall and his head is beginning to clear, and Kyle says, "Good luck."

And _shit,_ that hurts. Good luck. You know, just in case there's something horrible behind that door. It makes his stomach hurt. He murmurs a weak, "Thanks, Kyle," and continues down to the hallway. When he enters the mouth of it, he looks around blankly. There are doors, but he's not sure which he's supposed to go into. They all have names on them, but none of them are Dr. Kelly. He wanders down a bit farther, all the way to the end of the hall, and finally, the right door appears. It's open a crack, and it sports a plaque that says "Dr. Glenn Kelly". He ponders this for a second. Dr. Kelly doesn't look much like a Glenn to him, more like a Pat or a Tom. Something with three letters, anyway.

"Dr. Kelly?" he says, somehow not expecting a response.

"Yes, come on in, Butters." He pushes the door open all the way and is greeted by a small office with powder blue walls, a large oak desk cluttered with too many papers and files to count, and a chair facing the desk.

Kelly looks up from his computer (PC; he can't say Kelly struck him as a Mac guy) and smiles widely. "Have a seat," he offers. Butters does, and he looks everywhere but Kelly's face, instead noticing the photo frames nestled among the papers, the fancy gold-plated pen perched in his hand, the boring prints on the wall. Is this guy just hard for landscape watercolours, or did he just happen along a buy-one-get-one-free sale? "This is just going to be a quick meeting. You're going to introduce yourself, and then we're going to talk about why you're here. Okay? It won't take more than ten minutes, I promise."

_You promise, do you,_ Butters wants to say, but instead he says, "Okay." He hesitates for a second, for two seconds, for three. Then he begins. "Well, uh, my name is Butters Stotch, and I'm sixteen. I like hanging out with my friends and, uh, I'm in Theater, so I sing, I dance, I act, and, uh," he searches his brain for other things he likes doing, "I read, I guess." He's about to go into detail about what kind of books he reads before he realizes that they're all chick-lit with pretty girls and handsome boys dealing with drama and romance. They have titles like _The Pastel Heart _and _The End of the Wild Summer._

"Good. Do know why you're here, Butters?"

"Ah, I'm here because I've got globophobia, the fear of balloons. You guys are supposed to help with that," Butters says, twisting his fingers. There, it's out in one breath. Kelly knows this, surely, but does anyone else? He's certain the nurses the nurses do, but who cares about the nurses? He's thinking about how you tell your peers that you're afraid of fucking balloons. Jesus Christ.

"Right. Now, how long have you been afraid of balloons?"

He pauses. "Hmm, I don't really know."

_(liar liar)_

"How about a rough guess?"

_(six years and five months old to the day)_

"I think since I was about seven."

Dr. Kelly types something on the laptop sitting in front of him. He clears his throat. "Okay. Was this sparked by a bad incident or is it irrational?"

_(of course it was sparked by something fuckhead we were at that party and then)_

Butters looks at the ground. He doesn't even care if Kelly knows he's lying. "I dunno."

"Do you believe it interferes with your life much?"

_(every birthday every grand opening every event everything)_

"A bit, I guess. I mean, I-"

_(cold sweat heart pounds can't think about anything else world goes dark)_

"-I guess I freak out a bit."

Dr. Kelly looks at him incredulously. "Just a bit?"

Butters nods, but his head isn't really into it. Maybe he just twitches.

"If you insist. Now then, do you believe it impacts other people? Your family, maybe?" he continues coolly, looking at Butters, folding his hands on his desk. This man has clearly practiced maintaining a perfectly smooth face in the mirror.

"I guess. I mean, they don't buy balloons for my birthday, but that's not all that big a deal." He doesn't say that his parents are not the balloon-buying type. He also doesn't mention that the last time he got a balloon for his birthday, it was in seventh grade and it was from Kenny, who stole it from a display outside a store's grand opening. He doesn't mention that he started crying while Kenny looked on with a confused look, going on about how he couldn't really afford anything else, and how he was really just trying to be nice, honest.

_(the way he scoffed Sorry if you hate it, Butters, I'm not exactly Mr. Millionaire here. Jesus.)_

_(the way he let it go into the sky)_

_(the way his face fell when he realized you weren't upset because it was a cruddy happy birthday gesture it was because you were scared)_

God, that memory is burned in his mind. It's one among many like it, but that one rises to the surface of his churning thoughts quite often.

"It's affected my friends, sometimes," he mumbles. Kelly taps away at his keyboard, satisfied with this answer.

"Okay, Butters. Last question; do you think you have the will to get better?"

_(can't get better you don't just forget_ _stuff like that)_

"Yeah, I think- I think I do. I mean, nothing's impossible," he says. This is something he's been told all his life, but he's not really sure if he believes it.

Dr. Kelly taps his keyboard for another few seconds. Then, he looks up and nods, wearing a small smile like they've just had a pleasant conversation about football or something.

"Thank you, Butters, you may go now."

"Thanks, Dr. Kelly," Butters says, rising out of his seat. "I'll see ya later, I guess."

"You'll see me tomorrow, where we'll talk more," Kelly says, leaning back in his chair. "Okay?"

"Alrighty, bye, doctor," Butters says, turning around and leaving the office. When he swings the door shut behind him, he's instantly seized by nausea, tumbling in his stomach and shooting up his throat faster than he can stop. He lurches forward onto his knees and claps his hands tight around his mouth, like a lock. His last meal at the back of his throat, he can taste it, feel it. But he doesn't let it go; he swallows it. The act of swallowing his own vomit is disgusting in itself, but at least it's safe inside his stomach and not splattered on the carpet. It takes a couple of seconds for him to recover, but when he does, he shifts up and sits against the wall. He hasn't thought about

_(the balloons how many there were at the party)_

that event in forever. Of course he can't face his fears; Butters knows he can't. If _lying,_ let alone truth, can make him just about puke his guts up, what chance does he have of silencing the past and letting it go?

(_none) _

_(this whole thing the hospital the therapy they ain't gonna help no not one bit)_

These thoughts sneak in like intruders; they always do when he's reminded of it all, all the shit in his life that likes to sit at the bottom of the bottle and float around when he's all shaken up. He sits against the wall and looks at the plain paint on the walls until his thoughts settle and he's feeling better. By the time he re-enters the common area, he looks almost normal. He walks around to the front of the couch and everyone lifts their heads.

"Jesus, that was fast. We thought you'd be gone for half an hour for sure." Kenny says. He's moved onto the couch with Craig, and he's leaning against Craig's shoulder while they play some sort of game on Craig's phone. Butters sits down next to Kenny and thinks that they're the ones that look like a couple now.

"How'd it go?" Wendy asks, elbows on her knees, looking past Stan and Kyle to see his face.

"What'd he say?" Kyle prods.

"Shit, you look okay," Craig says. He puts his phone to sleep and looks at him with steady eyes, but there's concern written on his face, which Butters appreciates.

"So how'd it go?" Wendy asks again. "We were pretty worried."

"Um," Butters thinks, trying to form an answer that will answer all their questions. "Well, it went okay, actually. He just asked me to introduce myself and say why I was there, I guess."

"Nothing else?" Kyle breathes.

"Nope, it was just quick. Like a shot."

They stare in an odd mix of awe and scepticism and pride. Butters shifts a little. There's a long silence while he gets comfortable.

"You're not really okay, are you," Craig says quietly. It's not a question, just a statement, perhaps the most sensitive statement he's ever heard from Craig.

Butters' gut clenches up again, the burn in his eyes comes back with a vengeance. He covers his face with his hands and bends over, his forehead near to his knees. The tears come quickly, dripping through his hands and falling onto the worn denim of his jeans. They make him feel like such a fucking failure. You go and talk to a doctor for ten minutes and you start crying the second you come back. Well done, kid. Well done. He hiccups and snorts back mucus as quietly as he can, which isn't quiet at all, really. His face feels red, his nose feels sticky, and he feels as though he might just never come up from the safety of his hands. If only to be one of those attractive criers like in the movies; one solitary tear sliding down a dry cheek, heaven forbid they flush awkward colours or produce mucus. He hates Hollywood for promising this fantasy of looking pretty while you cry.

Kenny pushes off Craig and runs a hand down Butters' back. His fingers skitter like lizards, lightly, fleetingly.

"Fuck," he murmurs, "it's okay, baby. Just tell us what happened. We're all on your side."

Butters sobs into his hands for a while. He'd hate to rise and have a line of snot hanging from his hand to his nose. He coughs and sniffles a bit, and then picks his head up, rubbing his face with the back of his hands. When his hands are too wet to help anymore, he wipes them on the couch.

"It's nothing – _hic_ – he did or-or said. It just brought up a bunch of b-bad memories."

"D'you wanna tell us what?" Kenny soothes. "You don't have to."

"No, I'd r-rather not," Butters sniffs.

"That's fine, baby, that's fine."

Butters takes another few seconds to calm himself to the point of clear and coherent sentences, and then takes a shuddery breathe in. He says, "He's gonna be talking to everyone, s-so somebody's gonna be c-called down real soon."

"I wonder when?" Stan muses. "I mean, if it took an hour for him to get you together, than how long will it take for-"

"_Could Kyle Broflovski please come down to Dr. Kelly's office, thank you." _This time, nobody yelps, but everyone jumps a bit.

"There's your answer," Craig deadpans.

Kyle looks at Butters with dread on his face. "You sure it wasn't that bad?"

"No, it was okay. Well, not okay. But more okay than we we'd been thinking, if that's comforting at all." Butters knows it's not, and Kyle's face reflects that.

"You should go, man," Stan says.

"I will," Kyle snaps. Stan makes a face and looks the other direction. Kyle gets up, and Butters notices his hands are shaking.

"Good luck, Kyle," Kenny says uncertainly, and Butters is sure Kyle's stomach plummets just like his did. He hopes it plummets, really. _Good luck_ is such a shit thing to say. But how would they know until somebody says it to them? Kyle's eyes flick around and land at his shoes.

"Fuck you guys," he mumbles, walking briskly away. Nobody watches him go.

"He's just trying to be tough," Stan says, almost laughing. He doesn't quite make it, and makes a noise that sounds a bit like panting.

"Fuck, man, I wonder how he's gonna come out," Kenny muses aloud, settling next to Craig again. Butters scoots against Kenny, though gingerly. Kenny smile encourages him to shift into comfort, and Craig says nothing. Good enough for him.

"What's he scared of, Marsh?" Craig asks, picking at a stray cuticle. His eyes are tilted in a perpetual frown, though.

"Oh, damn, I should know this," Stan says, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Mmm, he said it once . . . shit, it was some sort of animal, I think. Hippos or something."

"You're fucking me. Hippos?" Craig snorts. "I can't think of anything more non-threatening than a hippo."

"Go play with yourself, Craig. God, it was something like that. I feel like a bad friend."

"Since when was Kyle ever even associated with a hippo?" Kenny asks dubiously.

"Guys, seriously, I'm trying. Fuck, what was it? H . . . Hippos . . ." Suddenly, his face lights up. "Horses! That was it! Kyle got kicked by a horse when he was like, ten or something. Guess it kind of scarred him."

"That was when he, uh, broke his leg, right?" Butters asks. He feels better now, but this exchange makes him realize they probably did the exact same thing while he was gone. Somebody asked an open question, _hey, what's Butters scared of?_ He's sure Kenny offered what he knew.

"Worse, dude, he broke his femur," Stan says, touching his upper thigh to indicate where. "He had to get a rod put in there and everything. They did all sorts of rehab and operations and stuff. He was in crutches for like, three months, and then he had a cane or something for a month or so. He says it still hurts sometimes."

"Christ, that's right. I remember," Kenny says. "We all kept borrowing his crutches. That was actually pretty funny."

"Actually, it kind of was. But seriously, he was limping for like, a year."

"Hippos," Craig says more to himself than anything, but clearly loud enough for Stan to overhear. Amusement plays around his voice and his eyes.

"Would you just let the hippo thing go? It was a mistake, okay?" Stan groans.

"_Hippos_ is Greek for horse," Wendy clips. "You'd know that if you did any sort of studies into origins of the English language."

Craig looks at her sceptically. "And you have?"

"For a matter of fact, yes," she answers purposely. "We studied it in Honors English, which none of you are taking."

"I had Honors English first semester," Craig says just as loftily. "We studied literature."

She looks at him with a sort of injured dignity. Stan squeezes her hand nervously, and Kenny reaches to scruff Craig's hair. "Be civil, Craig," he chides playfully.

It would be interesting to watch them argue for real about something, Butters has always thought. He's nothing if not observant, and he's observed them over the years. Wendy has this aloofness that she adopts when she's defensive, and she takes on an air like she's better than you. Craig has eyes that never fucking move off of yours, and the tone of voice he adopts makes it sound like he knows what you're saying is utter bullshit. He's the only person Butters knows that can destroy your entire sense of self-confidence without saying a word against you. Wendy is quick to go on the defensive, where Craig tends to wait until there's a real threat as opposed to an implied threat. Neither are loud arguers, both relying on good old-fashioned wordplay. Wendy speaks quickly and in long words that are meant to leave you dazzled at the beginning while she's dashing off to the finish line. Craig says as little as possible, but just enough to let you muddle yourself up. They both aim for leaving their opponent confused and lost, but Wendy does it all herself, and Craig lets them do it. He thinks it would be an interesting dynamic.

"When d'ya think Kyle'll be back?" Kenny says.

"Can we stop talking about time?" Wendy groans, rubbing her temples. "It makes it seem so damn long."

"Fine."

The stream of conversation ends there, but it means Butters starts counting minutes again. It's not for too long, though; Kyle comes back in ten minutes, give or take, and they all perk up to see him.

"Kyle! How'd it go?" Kenny says almost enthusiastically. Stan grins until he realizes happiness isn't the best emotion in such a situation, and then he backs off. It's clear he's still happy to see him, though.

"It went okay." He takes a seat next to Stan and turns to put his feet in Stan's lap.

"Just okay?"

"It was fucking fine, okay Kenny?" Kyle snaps, startling Kenny into submission. Wendy spares him enough empathy not to stare, but looks down to Butters, Kenny and Craig with a puzzled and worried look, as if to ask, _What should I do?_ Stan unlaces Kyle's shoes and drops them on the floor, then proceeds to begin a foot massage. He works the ball of Kyle's foot for a few seconds before he clears his throat, bringing up the nerve to say what's on his mind.

"Did he talk about the fe-"

"_Yes_, he fucking mentioned the femur and _no, _I don't want to fucking talk about it." Stan frowns but restrains himself from speaking further, rubbing Kyle's toes instead. Kyle's reaction is inconsolable. It's easy enough to deal with crying people. All you have to do is pat their backs and give them hugs, maybe whisper some nice phrases. You don't even have to tell the truth. You just have to talk. But angry people see right through lies, and they make themselves see shit in nice things. You can't touch them, you can't talk, but you can't shut up either or they start feeling ignored. All you can do is exist and hope it goes away quickly.

After a couple seconds of nervous, strained silence, Kyle sighs and rubs his face. "I'm sorry, guys. It's just that I haven't talked about that shit in a long time, and it's kind of freaky to be in a place where they encourage you to face all of it right up front." He looks back and gives them a look that's almost a smile, but lacks the humour. "You'll know it when they talk to you."

Butters is somehow relieved to know that Kyle feels the exact same way as he did. That sinking feeling that he's really actually fucked up enough that he has to be in a _hospital_ to treat a fear of something so commonplace, so terrifying; it aches the head. That sinking feeling aches like a bitch. It makes him want to cry and throw up and hide away all at once.

"So what do you have? I mean, I know you told me once, but I can't remember," Stan says sheepishly.

"It's called hippophobia. Fear of horses."

"See? Hippo to horse," Wendy says.

"What?" Kyle asks, frowning. Stan laughs and squeezes his feet.

"Nothing, dude. Don't worry about it."

Kyle raises an eyebrow but says no more. Lucky dick; Butters has always wanted to be able to raise one eyebrow.

They call Craig down next. He doesn't panic like Kyle did, or become nauseated like Butters, but he curls his lip between his teeth and bites on it lightly. Butters sees him often with red streaks or scabs on his lips. He guesses it's a habit he's picked up after all the years of braces.

"Move, McCormick," he says flatly, and Butters moves so Kenny can move.

"Good luck, doll," Kenny says with a bit of a smirk. It's inappropriate and he's sure Kenny knows that. Craig flips him off lazily and walks away with his head down.

Stan and Kyle make quiet small talk, and Butters leans on Kenny and gives not a single shit if they look gay. Kenny glances around the couch from time to time, and Butters finds himself wondering if he's done that in everyone's absence and he just hasn't noticed, or if it's just Craig. If he had to push labels, he might say Craig is Kenny's best friend. The same might not go for Craig – his group is and has always been tight, never straying too far away friend-wise – but Kenny's more of a drifter. If he doesn't like Stan and Kyle's girly gossip sessions, he finds somebody else to hang with. Kenny's loyal, never severing his ties to his old friends, but he has a low tolerance for being the third wheel.

After what feels like a long time has passed, Butters speaks up.

"Ken?"

"Hmm?" Kenny hums.

"You know Craig better than we all do; what's he got?" Butters says.

"Craig's got nebulaphobia. I dunno why I remember that; he only told me once long time ago. It's got a nice ring, I guess," he says, dropping an elbow on the arm of the couch.

"And what's that?"

"Fear of fog."

"Huh, imagine that. Wonder why," Butters says casually, but inwardly he hopes that Kenny actually does know and would be happy to tell him.

"I dunno, he didn't tell me, and man, I ain't gonna ask." He feels a small but honest pang of disappointment. He's sure Kenny could tell him Craig's middle name and probably what his favourite movie is and what kind of music he listens to, but when it comes to the interesting stuff, nobody knows anything about anyone.

When Craig comes back, his bottom lip is bleeding. His tongue keeps swiping across it and licking up the rising blood. He moves Kenny out of the way quietly and slips in next to him.

"That bad?" Kenny asks, rearranging himself.

"Nerve-wracking," Craig corrects.

"I can tell. You tried to eat yourself."

"Do you have any sense of what's appropriate when at all?" Craig snaps, and Kenny raises his eyebrows at him, opens his mouth to retaliate, and then closes it pointedly. Craig rolls his eyes like he can't deal with this shit anymore.

Butters can tell everyone is just as eager to ask what happened, because with respect and empathy and everything cast aside, they're all dying to know each other's weak spots. Nobody asks, though. Butters' and Kenny's small chat was enough to convince them all it wasn't worth asking. Out of all of them, Craig might be the one they know the least about, but it's expected, really. Craig isn't close to any of them except for Kenny, and Craig's a quiet kid. He doesn't talk much in class, and when he's with his friends, they usually find an unloved corner of the school to loiter in. Last time Butters talked to Craig, he's pretty sure he asked him about Biology homework and then maybe mentioned the weather. School and weather; the kind of conversations you have with somebody you know only two things about and have nothing to talk about beyond that.

Wendy goes next, about fifteen minutes after Craig's return. By now, they know enough about what to expect, question-wise and reaction-wise, that there isn't much of a stir when she goes. Some dramatics by Stan, a customary _good luck _from Kenny, and she's gone. Stan worries incessantly while she's gone, whining on about how long it's been and how she doesn't deserve this.

"Craig, what time is it?"

"11:16."

There's a pause of about twenty seconds.

"Craig?"

He rolls his eyes. "11:16, Marsh."

Butters counts this time. In thirty-nine seconds, he asks again. "Craig?"

"For _fuck's_ sake, Marsh," Craig growls. "It's 11:17."

Kyle places a hand over Stan's mouth, straight-faced. Stan starts licking his hand and making sad little animal noises, but such is the life of a best friend. Kyle's used to it.

When she re-enters the common room, he nearly dies. As soon as she sits down, she's immediately entangled in his arms and he's going on like the lovesick moon he is around her. She peels himself away from his and kisses his cheek.

"I'm fine, Stan, thank you for asking," she says.

"Sorry, love," he pouts. "I was really worried about you."

She ignores his affection and plows on. "He didn't say much, really. He just asked why I was here and if I believed I had the will to get better."

"That's not so bad," Stan says, holding her hands.

She rolls her breath around her mouth and weighs her words like she has something important to say. Butters sits up and looks at her. "I've got athazagoraphobia; the fear of being forgotten." She pauses to further work up her nerve. "When I was a little kid, like five or six or something, we went on a road trip. I don't know where exactly, but it was to see family that lives out in Utah somewhere. Anyway, we stopped at this gas station to fuel up and grab some chips or coffee or whatever. I was sort-of-not-really sleeping in the back, and when they pulled over, I pretended to still be asleep. My mom and dad though it would be okay to just leave me there, because I was a pretty heavy sleeper. So they went in without me. After a while, I got bored and wanted to go see what they were doing. I went into the store, and I guess we just missed each other around the gas pumps. I went into the store, and they got in the car, and," she stops. Stan is frowning, mouth slightly open, hands tight around hers. Butters can guess how this is going to end, but he hopes it isn't true. Wendy is too nice to have an awful story like this.

She pauses again. Her eyes aren't wet or even glazed, but she still looks sad and bitter. "And, well, they drove off without me. What fucking _idiots._ They had _one_ kid and they couldn't even keep an eye on it. They had _one job_ and they couldn't fucking do it right."

"What'd you do?" Stan breathes.

"I wandered around the store for a minute or so, then I went to the bathroom to look for them. When I came out, I walked back outside and realized the car was gone, so I ran back inside again and started crying. The poor store clerk came over to me and asked what was wrong, and when I told him, he bought me a bag of cookies and one of those gigantic Slurpees. Neither of my parents carried a phone, you know, back in the day when they weren't so popular, so we just had to wait."

"How long?" Butters asks.

"I dunno, I think about an hour or so. It was probably less, but I was little and time didn't mean much. I finished the cookies and the Slurpee, though, so it must have been a while," she says, and she sighs. "I thought they wouldn't come get me. I really thought they would just leave me there forever."

She looks up. "I'm sorry, I'm just still mad about it. It was completely avoidable, and yet they still managed to leave me behind. Fucking stupid, that's what the whole thing was. So to this day, I'm always scared that I'm gonna be left behind like I was then."

"No wonder you're always in such a rush to catch the bus," Kyle muses.

"Yeah, the bus freaks me out, I always try to take extracurriculars so I can drive myself home or whatever." She scrunches her nose up and falls backwards into the cushions. "I can't help it. I always feel like everybody's going to forget me and I'll be alone. And frankly, that's terrifying."

"God, Wendy, why didn't you tell me?" Stan says, looking more emotionally unstable than Wendy herself.

"You never asked," she says back. Stan opens his mouth to say something, but it doesn't come out, and he just stays quiet. His face turns an interesting shade of grey as he appears to wrestle with inner turmoil. It's nearly humourous in the way Stan overreacts (_Drama queen, _Butters thinks) but still retains a bitter, remorseful edge.

He's beyond horrified when they call his name next.

"Go, Stan," Wendy says, pushing lightly on his back.

He looks at her with panicked eyes and says, "You saw what happened to Kyle and Craig and Butters and _you_. Fuck, Wendy, I don't want to go in there." Butters wants to say it's not that bad. It's only really bad for the five minutes after, when you realize that shit's getting serious. That's the worst part, really.

Wendy squeezes his hands and says, "We all have to, and it's not that bad. He doesn't hurt you or anything."

"Wendy, I can't," he says brokenly.

"I'll escort you," Kyle offers, grabbing his forearm.

Stan looks at him for a long time, and then, finally, relaxes slightly.

"Okay," he whispers. Wendy smiles sadly, pulling him over and kissing him lightly on the lips.

"I'll be here, darling," she croons, running her fingers down his face.

"I know," he murmurs. Butters looks away; he always blushes when couples show affection in his vicinity. He can't help but stare, but at the same time he hates to just because it's so very awkward for him. Thankfully, Stan stands up and they break apart just as the heat on his cheeks is becoming embarrassing. Kyle gets up as well.

"C'mon dude, let's go," Kyle urges, pulling him away. "You're just hurting yourself by hanging around like this."

"But I'm-" Pause. "She's-" Pause. "Love you," he finishes, looking mournfully at her. She smiles.

"Love you too, Stan," she says.

"_Come on,_ Stan," Kyle urges again, tugging on his shoulder. He pouts and turns around, drudging behind Kyle's brisk steps.

"Never one for romance, was he?" Butters says, reflecting his own awkwardness.

"Not our Kyle," Kenny responds. Butters expects him to say something about Bebe and her fleeting relationship with Kyle, but he doesn't.

Bebe was Kyle's token high school girlfriend. He'd be surprised if there was ever anything deep or truly loving in their relationship, but they cared enough about each other. They would walk home together sometimes. They'd have lunch together. He'd go watch her volleyball games, and she'd watch him whenever the debate club had a trial, practice or preformance. Then, after a month or so, they just kind of fizzled out. He didn't go to her games quite often, and she stopped going to the debate practices. Bebe moved on to somebody else and Kyle returned to just hanging out with Stan. They started under the radar and ended under the radar.

Kyle doesn't come back until Stan does. Both look alright, Stan perhaps a little wobbly-kneed, Kyle a little pissed.

"He made me wait for him," Kyle grumbles, sitting Stan down on the couch before sitting down himself.

"I said I was sorry, dude," Stan mumbles, face red. Kyle doesn't respond, but his face falls in a way that suggests he knows his lamenting was uncalled for.

"So?" Wendy says, twining their hands together.

"It actually went okay," Stan says thoughtfully. "I mean, he didn't really ask much in the way of personal questions-"

"It's coming," Kenny throws in.

"-but it definitely wasn't _nice_ or anything."

Butters thinks for a second and says, "You're scared of hospitals, right?" He braces himself for a reaction and hopes he hasn't somehow offended Stan. Like most of the people around him, he's had a vague idea of Stan's phobia since they were kids.

But Stan doesn't yell or sigh or roll his eyes. He's too nice, too gentle. He smiles almost apologetically and says, "Yeah, and more recently, vomit."

"Vomit?" Butters asks. "Boy, that's ironic."

"Yeah, I know," Stan says, scratching the back of his neck nervously. "It was from when I got that bout of food poisoning last year. Remember, when we were camping?" He glances over at Kyle while he says this.

"Oh, god, yeah. He was puking nonstop and then there was blood and everything; we had to take him to the ER."

"Yeah, I ended up tearing a blood vessel in my throat, that's what was causing the blood. But god, I was so freaked out when I saw all the red, I just about died." He shakes his head. "Not exactly traumatic, but it was still fucking scary as shit. I thought I was gonna die, no shit. Every time I've thrown up after that, I just clench up and start hyperventilating. It's really bad, and with that on top of hospitals _and_ snakes, my parents decided I'd fit in pretty good here." Butters can feel his stomach lurch when Stan says _traumatic_. It's an awful word.

"God, you're more fucked up than I thought," Craig says, glancing over.

"Most of them are irrational, so . . ."

"Still counts," Craig replies offhandedly.

"I don't wanna be the most fucked up," he sighs, "What kind of a title is that?"

"I don't think you really are, but you've got us beat number-wise," Kyle says. Stan shoots him a crooked half-smile.

Three phobias. The bastard has _three phobias_ and nothing really bad has ever happened to him. Butters chews his tongue and wonders whether to envy Stan or pity him.

Minutes slide by, and they call down Kenny at last. He rolls off their legs and salutes, saying, "See you guys. Don't worry too much about me, 'kay?"

"We won't, Kenny," Stan replies.

Kenny half hums, half sings the first verse of _Eleanor Rigby_ while he walks away. They can hear his voice fade as he walks down the hall, finally dying when the door to the office slams shut.

"He's got a good voice, doesn't he," Butters muses, moving to the other side of the couch to avoid leaning on Craig.

"Yeah, he does. He could be on American Idol some shit. Did pretty well in the talent show and the school musical, remember? When they did _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_? He was Charlie," Stan rambles absently.

"He fit the role pretty well," Wendy says. "He should sing more. All the girls would just be swooning all over the place. Who doesn't like a guy that can sing?"

"What's he got? I never really thought Kenny to be the phobia sort of guy," Kyle asks, changing the subject.

"Fucked if I know. He never said anything about a phobia," Stan says. Wendy nods and shrugs. He looks down the couch and says, "Hey Craig? You know anything?"

Craig bites the corner of his lip, winces, and shrugs. "No. He's never said anything about it."

"Huh. Maybe we can work something out of him when he comes back."

"Ain't that a bit rude?" Butters says gingerly.

Kyle sighs. "Yeah, well, it's Kenny. He'll get it."

"Seemed pretty darn okay going in there," Butters observes.

"Kenny's fearless, man. You can't scare Kenny with just a doctor," Kyle says. "I'm sure he'll give the guy shit if he gets too touchy-feely."

"He's a good kid," Stan says, nodding. "Kenny could be a superhero if he wanted to. He'd be the best fucking superhero, one of those guys that can do anything, but in between every story there'd be a scene of him smoking up. God, I'd read that comic."

"He'd look pretty nice with the Marvel muscle tone," Wendy says with a bit of a cheeky smile. Stan makes a face at her, and then laughs.

"Yeah, okay. But come on, everyone looks good with Marvel muscles."

"Not Dr. Kelly," Kyle says, to their general amusement.

Nobody talks for the last few minutes precluding Kenny's return. When he does come back, he's humming the chorus.

"So?" Craig asks while he lies down between them, head in Craig's lap, feet in Butters'.

"It was just peachy, darling. We just had a grand old time, frolicking through flower fields and playing checkers," Kenny says, grinning emptily.

"Cut the bullshit, Kenny. How'd it go?"

"It went kind of badly, thanks for asking. He asked me how I was doing, told me why I was here, asked me if I could get better. Nothing really awful, just vague awkwardness," he answers truthfully, frowning a little. Butters unties his shoelaces idly.

"And why are you here?"

"I'll tell you later."

"That's not fair, you know damn well everything about everyone and you won't even tell us about yourself. We know what everyone is this room is scared of except you," Craig says, twirling one of the drawstrings of Kenny's hoodie around his fingers.

"God, I'm not gonna survive this if I have you _and_ Dr. McFucker going on like this," he moans, scowling. His face softens and he glances up at Craig, then down towards everyone else. Butters can see his bright eyes flashing as they flick from person to person, and finally shut.

"I'm scared of poison. The name is iophobia. I've had it since I was fourteen." He doesn't volunteer any more information, but neither did Butters. He feels a little cheated, starved to know more, but he's sure they all felt the same about him when he opted not to tell.

"You know who I thought would end up here? Cartman," Stan says suddenly. "Like, nobody can be _that_ self-confident. I thought for sure he'd wind up with some sort of mental thing. Schizophrenia or some shit like that."

"I think he's a narcissist," Wendy says. "I read about it on Wikipedia. He displays a lot of the classic signs, I think. I don't know, it just seems right to me."

"He probably has his own damn therapist," Kyle grumbles.

"Tweek has his own therapist," Craig interjects. "Sees him three times a week. Guess it keeps all those conspiracy theories of his in check."

"You know, I could have guessed," Kenny says.

"But you know? It's funny. I would've thought that we'd be pretty stable, considering we, uh. Haven't had the most normal childhood, I guess you could say. Like, more used to weird shit than other people, because come on, where else in the world does your fourth grade teacher become a lady and then a man, and where else is there an alien threat every other week? But no. We end up in the fucking asylum," Stan concludes.

"I dunno. Everyone's sort of messed up, in their own way. We're just the only ones that give enough of a fuck to go and treat this," Wendy says.

"I guess so," Stan says, shrugging. "You'd think we'd adapt better, though."

Dr. Kelly walks into the room, and they hear him before they see him. "Excuse me, kids," he says loudly, and they all jump a bit. Craig twists over the side of the couch to see him.

"Yeah?" he answers.

"There will be no more that you have to do today. Today, we're going to start setting up a therapy plan based on our interview, and actual therapy will start tomorrow. Your specialized treatment will take in about a week, maybe less. So please, relax, and we'll see you tomorrow. Lights out at eleven." With that, he leaves the common area, footsteps dulled by the carpet.

Craig shifts back to his original position and sighs.

"We have like, ten hours until then. What the fuck are we going to do until then?"

"Cuddle?" Kenny suggests lamely. He is ignored.

"I don't know," Wendy mumbles. "I'm not comfortable here."

"Let's make a promise," Butters says, finding a voice in the small crowd, "to not have any more secrets. If we're in this together, no more secrets and half-truths."

Somehow, nobody frowns. They exchange looks that say skepticism, curiosity, and acceptance. Then, Kyle says, "How do we know nobody's going to lie?"

"That's the whole point of it," Butters says softly. "You can lie if you want, but you're only hurting yourself. We'll do better here – and get out faster – if we can all understand each other."

Kenny looks up at him and smiles sadly. "I actually like that a lot, Butters. I think it'd be nice to know everyone's stories by the end of this. And, I'd like to tell everyone why I'm here. But not now. The wound's too fresh."

"He'll only drudge it up more, Ken," Craig says, the words dangerously close to being worried in nature.

"I know. Still, not now."

"So are we all gonna do it?" Butters asks, glancing around.

There's a pregnant pause.

"I will," Stan offers.

"I will too," Wendy says.

"Of course," Kenny says.

"Alright," Craig submits.

They look at Kyle. He frowns and huffs.

"Okay. I will too, but I still don't know how it's gonna work," he grumbles, fangs pulled.

Stan squeezes his shoulder affectionately. "Really, Ky, who'd be benefitting by lying about this shit? It's like the Vegas rule; what happens in the fucked up phobia hospital stays in the fucked up phobia hospital. So what if we know everything about you by the time it's over? Dr. Kelly will know everything anyway."

Kyle sighs. "Okay, Stan. Okay. I get the logic behind it."

"So you've completely agreed?"

"Yes, Stan," he says patiently, like how you'd speak to a very young child.

"So that's it," Wendy says firmly. "No more secrets."

Everyone nods, and Butters can feel his chest swell with pride. No more secrets, no more half-truths. And yet, a little part of his brain is still yearning for ambiguity. God, who wants to tell the world why you're scared of balloons? He knows he doesn't, but the knowledge that nobody else does either is a comfort that cold way knowing things could be worse always is.


	3. Your Brain Can't Keep Up Your Beak

**I'm really sick of the chapter, I've edited major plot holes out of it for ages****. There used to be a pretty shippy scene in here that first was softened, and ultimately was cut in favour of appearing later. Sorry, haha. Enjoy!**

Kenny spends the first three or four days adjusting and everything goes fine. He falls into the routine of the hospital; get up, have breakfast, go to private therapy with his nurse (they all have designated therapists; his is named Bridgette), have lunch, hang around with his friends, go to group therapy, have dinner, one more therapy session (with Dr. Kelly), hang around until he becomes tired. This isn't a normal routine for him by any means, but he thinks it's likely he won't be normal for some time. But, normal or not, it's everyday, and that makes it normal in some sort of way, some sort of sick-person-in-a-hospital way.

Therapy isn't that bad, to be honest. After the initial terror of it wears off, it turns out to be a fairly mundane hour or so of talking to Bridgette or Dr. Kelly, letting insecurities leak out while they gently prod at Kenny's past. In truth, it's rather calming, but Kenny isn't about to admit that.

He likes the sessions with Bridgette better. She talks to kids really well; she speaks the language and understands the slang, and she's really good at reading body language. She doesn't ask about how he's doing in the hospital, but about him, his interests, his past, his home life, his love life. If she has a clipboard, he can't see it, and she doesn't keep darting behind her computer. A bubble screensaver occupies the screen, and she doesn't take notes at all. She sits at her desk and plays with her hair or paints her nails, and when he asked if she was allowed to do that, she winked and said not to tell Kelly. On the first visit, she asked what his favourite band was, and when he told her, she downloaded a few albums. Now they play lowly while he visits with her. It's all a ploy to make him feel secure and safe, but god, it works. He mouths the words to Ludo and they talk about whatever feels right.

It's different with Kelly. He's definitely a doctor, definitely a therapist instead of just a lady who lacquers her nails orange and listens to him ramble. Bridgette is by far more comfortable, and he feels like his mouth just falls open and the words flood out when he's with her, but when he talks to Kelly, it feels like shit gets done. He doesn't talk about Kenny's life. He talks about his recovery so far, how he's feeling about group therapy, changes he notices in Kenny. That sort of professional drivel. Kenny doesn't mind the businesslike attitude, but he doesn't always like to answer Kelly's questions and instead likes to redirect their conversation to something friendlier.

Consider:

Kelly looks at him and says, "Tell me what's on your mind, Kenny. How were your other therapy sessions today? Did you have any triggers?"

Kenny says, "I don't know."

Kelly gives a wry smile and says, "Tell me what you'd tell your girlfriend if she asked the same thing."

He sighs. "I'd tell her I was fine, 'cause girls really like worrying about shit like that. I'd tell my boyfriend I was feeling awful, because I'm in therapy talking about how much my state of mind sucks. It's easier to talk to guys, because at least I kind of know what they'll say. I mean, I know what I'd say, anyway."

The look the doctor gives him alerts him to the fact that everything after _boyfriend_ went in through one ear and out the other.

"Are you gay, Kenny?" He asks it in a way that manages to avoid sounding like a shocked demand from a surprised acquaintance and more like a gentle question from a therapist: unbiased, equitable.

"Guess it would come up at some point or another," Kenny mumbles.

"I see."

They redirect Kelly, at least. They catch him off-guard enough that he moves to something else, figuring Kenny wouldn't have brought it up if he didn't have something to say about it. _Have you ever had a boyfriend that knew about your phobia _is a comparably nicer question than _Have you ever reacted in front of your friends_.

These delaying tactics are what keeps Kenny through therapy. But, he's talked about being gay, and he's talked about his dysfunctional home, and he's talked about that one time he used his parents' meth, and now, he's finally running out of side roads to swerve onto when the highway becomes too bumpy. He talks to Bridgette about how much he hates Dr. Kelly, though in truth, he doesn't really hate him, and the way she nods lets him know she knows he's being melodramatic.

Group therapy is fun, albeit awkward. It's in another room, connected to the common area by another hallway. The room is big and feels like a classroom, with nondescript bluish carpeting, lots of plastic chairs, and several large tables. First, the group therapist arranges some chairs into a small circle, sits them all down, and then they all talk. Afterwards, they do something that supposedly reflects how they're feeling. Generally, it's something creative, like drawing or painting. Kenny likes it enough; it's like English class, where you get to read a short story and make up bullshit about symbolism.

When they talk, the nurse asks questions and leaves them open for anyone to answer. Innocent questions like "How did you sleep last night?" are answered by nearly everyone, and from there they chat for a while, but then she pulls out things like "If you were faced with the choice of facing your phobia or killing someone, what would you do?" and the whole room goes silent. Sometimes, someone answers.

Kenny's been to solitary therapy with Bridgette today. She did a cool paisley pattern on her fingernails and asked him about his first girlfriend. He rambled a little bit about Lola, who, in sixth grade, sent the word out that she liked him, so he asked her out and they were together for two weeks before they decided it was too weird. She laughed and told him about her first boyfriend in grade nine, whom she dated for three days before he said, "My friends don't really like you, so we're going to break up." God, he likes his sessions with her. Now he's in group therapy. They've already gone over the nice questions, the how-did-you-sleep-how-are-you-today. Now, the nurse pulls out her fucking clipboard and she starts dropping the A-bomb questions.

"What would the circumstances have to be for you to willing act against your phobia?" she asks. The group therapist is a gaunt, ash-blonde, lipstick-wearing lady named Victoria. She'd be pretty if she wasn't so skinny, with angular arms that have bones sticking out of them. Kenny guesses if she's not anorexic now, she used to be.

At first, there's a beat of silence, and Kenny expects that the question will fizzle and die like the rest of them. But, Wendy speaks up.

"Well, my phobia isn't really a tangible thing. How would that work?" she asks. Wendy is one of those kids that answers all the teachers' questions because she feels bad for them. She's one of those kids that says, "Well, this is quiet," when nobody speaks during a car ride. Kenny knows. He's driven her places. (Usually, he turns the radio on so he doesn't have to listen to her.) She can't stand silence, and even if it means throwing herself into an awkward place, she speaks. Of course, she's smart; she can tell the difference between a very tense silence not to be broken and an optional silence that only needs a conversational topic to be eliminated. She knows when to hold her mouth, and yet he's sure she hates doing it.

Victoria says, "Let's say you were taking a bus to New Mexico. You stop at a convenience store in the middle of nowhere. What would have to happen to make you actively do something that could result in missing the bus?" He thinks of her saying, "Guess nobody has anything to say, huh," to the patrons of the Greyhound.

Wendy slumps forward in her chair and rests her elbows on her knees. "Let's see." She pauses and thinks. "It would have to be something that would mean risking my well-being if I got on the bus. Like, if I knew there was a murderer on the bus, I wouldn't get on."

"But then what? Then you'd be stranded in the middle of nowhere."

"Yes, but I'd be alive," she says firmly.

"What if the guy on the bus wasn't actually a murderer? Or what if he was, but he honestly just wanted to go to New Mexico?" Kenny asks, eyeing her. Her nose wrinkles.

"Damn, I don't know. You know what? I'd probably end up getting on anyway because I'd be thinking just that."

"So what would happen if you missed the bus? What would you do then?" he urges.

Her hand slips into her pocket and pulls out a piece of gum. She unwraps it and starts playing with the wrapper. "I don't know. I guess I'd call somebody, or see if another bus would come, but more likely than not I'd flip my shit and cry in the bathroom."

"Okay, so it would take life or death to make you willingly be left behind," Victoria says, raising her thin, plucked eyebrows. "That's not uncommon."

"It wouldn't take much for me to go against that stuff. They're not that deep rooted for me," Stan says. "Like, if I had a friend in the hospital, I'd totally go see him. Or if Kyle started puking, I wouldn't just run away. But a snake would have to be physically hurting someone before I'd scare it away rather than run for my life."

"Well, that's alright. But if Kyle started puking, would you be scared?" she asks, scribbling something down on a clipboard. Kenny hates it when she does that, because it reminds him that she's not engaging in casual conversation with them out of the goodness of her heart; she's reporting on them.

"I'd be terrified. But I don't think I'd be useless, like I think I could get him a bucket or clean it up or something," Stan's brows are furrowed the slightest bit. He looks like he doubts the sincerity of his words. Kyle looks at him cynically, obviously doubting him as well.

"Alright." She grins at him and shows off slightly coffee-tinted teeth. "Does anyone else want to share?"

"I'd have to be totally reassured that a horse was safe, and in absolutely no danger at all before I'd get close to one," Kyle says.

"So what if you had to get out of danger really quick and a horse was your only mode of transportation?" Kenny suggests.

"I wouldn't do it," Kyle says mindfully. "I'd freeze up. I wouldn't be able to do it, no matter how urgently I needed to leave an area. I'd rather die before I'd go galloping off on some fucking stallion. Hell, I get uncomfortable watching horses in _movies_; I'd be awful in real life."

"What if all your friends were going to die? What if you had to deliver something that would save the whole world and you had to do it on a horse?" Kenny insists.

Kyle sighs in exasperation and runs his fingers through his hair. "Well, maybe then."

"But you said you never would and you'd rather-"

"That's enough, Kenny," Victoria says finally. He pulls a face and slouches back in his chair.

"Would you kill a horse?" Craig asks, tugging at the sleeves of his hoodie. Today, he's wearing a black one with a standout silver zipper. The elbows are a bit worn out, but it's new from September and could certainly be in worse shape.

"Excuse me?" Kenny looks back to Kyle, who's looking perplexed and a little disturbed.

"Would you kill a horse," he repeats flatly.

"I – Well – That's not really fair, Craig," he defends indignantly.

"How so?"

"I'm scared of horses, but killing one is an entirely differently matter! I mean, I'd have to get close enough to incapacitate it, for one, and two, I'd have to physically end its life, and while that would mean one less horse on the planet, it would also mean-"

"You're rambling," Craig points out.

"You asked!" Kyle shouts, turning red.

"You answered," he says simply. There are holes in his logic, but Kenny finds it entertaining enough that it doesn't bother him.

"That's _enough_," Victoria says firmly. "We're here to have a discussion about our fears. We're here to grow. There is no place for argument here."

"Sorry," Kyle mutters, and under his breath he adds _fucking asshole_. Craig follows suit and apologizes grudgingly as well.

"Does anyone else want to share?"

There's a silence in which they all wait for the other to say something.

She looks at him, and her eyes pierce right through his and out through the back of his skull. He rubs his head insecurely.

"Kenny? You haven't said much about yourself today," she says pointedly. "What would make you handle poisonous material?"

He stares at her for a second until something in him flicks on and he realizes he should probably speak.

He clears his throat and says, "I guess it would have to mean saving someone, like, saving-"

_(saving her)_

"Like saving somebody's life or something," he finishes. "I usually get my sister to clean and stuff. I don't like to."

She nods and writes something down. "Thank you."

"Can I go to the washroom?" Kenny asks on impulse.

"Right outside and to your right," Victoria says, pointing to the door. Kenny manages a _thanks_ and skitters out of the room. He doesn't really have to go, but he needs a second away from nurses and buses and piercing stares, piercing questions. He slips outside and takes a second to breathe before he bumps the door open with his shoulder and walks into the porcelain room, all shiny surfaces and terrifically white sinks. The mirrors are nice, too; big and straight, no ripples. He leans in and scratches at a small red crater above his lip. His mom always said that big mirrors were a waste of time. She said it just made you pickier about all the shit on your skin. With a crooked smile, he thinks she might be right.

The hot water comes quickly, always a luxury. He splashes it over his face and collects it in his hands to drink from. Warm water is gross, everyone who's ever had to drink from a water bottle that's been outside for a while knows that, but it dampens his throat and slicks the tissue. Satisfied, he taps the air dryer and rubs his hands under the heat. Before he leaves, he glances again into a mirror and shakes his hair down.

And then he sees it; a bottle of cleaner, the sort that smells like lemons and scours like there's no tomorrow; the sort that requires an extremely fast call to the poison control center when ingested. The cleaning staff must have neglected to put it away.

_(oh shit oh SHIT what if it was on the sink I definitely touched that sink touched my face)_

His thoughts explode like popcorn.

_(what if I ate some accidentally?)_

_(it's seeping into my skin)_

_(this is where I die)_

The room starts spinning, spiraling, rocketing away somewhere much too far away. Something in this room must be solid, must be real. He reaches out and blindly grasps the counter.

_(no)_

Feverishly, he sticks his head into the sink, bumping his cheek painfully on the faucet in the process, and turns on the water. The cold water gushes over the little red mark and washes it out.

_(it's coming back no)_

He pulls his head out from under the tap, feeling water roll down his face. Holes form in his vision, _oh god_, his hands are so alien to him, and breath comes patchily.

_(can't resist no god no I don't want to relive that)_

Kenny faints, falls forward on the sink and then backwards on the floor. Water pools in his ear.

_(here)_

_(we)_

_(go)_

_He's watching Karen in the backyard. She picks dandelions and turns them into chains and crowns. She says Allie at school taught her how. Kenny sips at a beer and tells her that's fantastic, she should make him one. Karen is all bright smiles and ten-year-old pleasure. She says she will. What's wonderful about this is that she's picking dandelions like they're roses, valuable, beautiful. Carol sticks her head out the door, says, Kenny, is everything okay, do you need anything? Kenny says No, thanks Mom. He doesn't know why she asked, but he likes it, he likes when his parents are happy._

_Kenny, look! Karen cries, and she holds up a dandelion crown._

_That's beautiful, baby doll, Kenny says. Is it for me?_

_Yeah, bend down, she says, and he does, and she arranges it on his head._

_You're the king of everything!_

_I guess I am, he chuckles._

_Carol's head comes out of the door again, and she says, Kenny, baby, I'm sorry, but could'ja spray the tree in the back? I been meaning to, there's so many bugs on it, I don't wanna lose that tree. Could'ja, baby?_

_Sure, mom, he says, and he trots over to the shed in the back. There's some pesticide in there, and it's old but it works. He picks up the jug – so old that what's left of the label is dirty and cracked and illegible – and pours some into a dirty plastic container and looks for a flat surface to put it on._

_Karen, could you hold this? I have to get some water._

_Okay. She takes it in her hands and looks at it. What is it?_

_Bad stuff. Not for kids, Kenny says. He turns the outside faucet on and nothing comes out._

_Just a second, baby, I have to go inside a second. He carries a bucket in and fills it in the kitchen. When it's half full, he figures that's good enough and brings it out again. He walks out the door, not having bothered to close it in the first place, and Karen's still standing on the grass, making a face at the cup she's holding._

_Something happen, baby? Kenny says, taking the cup and pouring it into the bucket. He shakes it slightly to stir it._

_Pretty gross stuff, Karen says._

_Yeah, it's gross, Kenny agrees. He doesn't think about it while he retrieves the sprayer from the shed and fills it. He doesn't think about it while she watches him spray the tree._

_What's that stuff do, Kenny?_

_Hmm? He snaps out of a daydream to answer her. It kills bugs. See all the little dots on the leaves on this tree? They're a kind of bug that's hurting the tree._

_So it's really bad? she asks carefully._

_Really bad. Now, he cues in and stops spraying to look at her straight on. Karen? Did you touch it?_

_No, she says quickly._

_He frowns, but nods. Alright. I want you to wash your hands anyway, okay?_

_Okay, Kenny, she says._

_That evening, she starts shivering at the dinner table, while Carol spoons out Kraft Dinner. Her spoon hovers and she asks, Karen? You cold?_

_No, Karen answers. I feel really bad._

_Bad how? she asks, handing the pot off to Stuart, who hands it off to Kevin, who puts it on the table._

_Really really bad. My stomach hurts a lot, and my throat burns. It hurt a bit earlier, but I thought it would go away. She shivers violently, like it's January instead of July._

_I think you should lay down if you're that sick, Carol says gently. She helps her up and leads her to the living room. Stuart abandons his beer to trail behind protectively. Kevin looks at Kenny and shrugs. Kenny shrugs back._

_She lies down gingerly and Stuart fetches a blanket to throw over her. Then, they both kiss her cheek and come back to the dinner table. She finishes dishing out the food, but her eyebrows are crunched together in worry the whole time. They eat quickly and wordlessly. Kenny opts to clear the table instead of bickering about it with Kevin. He's rinsing the first dish when he hears Karen get up and run to the bathroom. He glances her way just in time to see her clobber her shoulder on the door frame and fall to her knees._

_Karen? You okay? He runs over to her and she's facing the floor and gagging, making horrible noises he never wanted to hear his baby sister make._

_Mom? Dad? he calls out. He can only watch in shock as she proceeds to vomit everything left in her. She hacks and coughs and weakly spits out half-digested bits and things into the puddle she's made. It's all spiraled with blood. The first thing he can think of is to wet a washcloth and crouch next to her._

_Baby, lift your head, okay? he asks as steadily as she can. Carol and Stuart come around the corner and gasp. Stuart bends over and lifts her up, her small body looking more fragile than ever in his arms. Kenny stands and dabs at the spit around her mouth._

_Open your mouth, okay?_

_She does, and he can see that it's red and burning and inflamed._

_Karen, did you drink that pesticide? he snaps, and winces at the aggression in his voice._

_Please don't be mad, I thought it would be okay, she manages, coughing and beginning to cry._

_I'm not mad, I swear, he says quickly. I just wish you would have told me. He pets her hair back._

_I feel horrible, she sobs._

_Take her to bed, Dad, Kenny says. He nods and carries her off, murmuring nothings like Shh, baby doll, it'll be okay._

_Kenny watches her through the next few days as she shivers and sweats and vomits. He watches her cry and moan as she spends another night throwing up the scraps left in her stomach._

_And oh, it's all his fault she can't stand up for a week. It's his fault she was so, so sick._

_It's his fault, and he can't change it, can't fix it, can't ever touch it again, can't can't can't_

Kenny sits up and touches his throbbing temples. The water is still slick on his face; he couldn't have been out for more than a minute. But it had felt so long, so complete. He could taste the beer, feel the material of his sister's shirt.

_(can't)_

"Oh, fuck," he moans, standing up. He turns the mouth of the air dryer up to his face and blow dries it until it's acceptably dry. When he's finished, he regains some sort of composition and walks back to the common area. The group doesn't look up on his arrival, they don't say _god, Kenny, you look like a train wreck,_ or _Jesus Christ, what took so long?_ He looks at the clock and notices he's been gone for a bit over five minutes, a forgivable time. His place next to Butters is still open, and he sits down.

"Welcome back, Kenny. We've moved onto reactions."

"Oh, okay," he says. The faces around him are nervous and sick. Only Victoria looks at ease. She pushes the stands of hair that have fallen out of her bun behind her ears and continues.

"I want everyone to share for this one. It doesn't have to be long. Just state what goes through your head or what happens when you encounter your phobia," she says in her clear voice. Kenny watches her over-defined tendons contract and relax in her skin. "We'll go clockwise, alright? Starting with Kenny."

_(aw shit)_

"Well, I, um-"

_(no more half truths)_

"-I start panicking. I start thinking I've ingested the toxins, even if they're in a cupboard or something. Like, I start thinking maybe I blacked out and drank some even though I don't remember doing it." He glances around and smirks. "Yeah, it's stupid."

"It's not stupid. Leopold?"

Butters twists his fingers and says, "Ah, it's just Butters, ma'am." He's gone over it with her before, but she doesn't seem to get it. "I start, well, freaking out, I guess, I mean, I get all panicky, like I can't breathe."

"Good. Kyle?"

Kyle slumps back and sighs. "I dunno. I get scared. I don't ever go near horses, though, so I don't really know. I've only really been close enough to start feeling uncomfortable."

"That's fine, Kyle." She pauses to scribble on her clipboard again. "Stan?"

"It's different for all of them. For vomit, my stomach clenches up and I usually faint." He runs a hand through his hair out of habit. "Um, hospitals I can stand, it's just that I can't spend too long in them or I get kind of, you know, jumpy. More jumpy than the average person. They make me nauseous, though, and then that sparks the puke hang-up, and then it all snowballs and it's awful." He chuckles, but not humorously. "And for snakes, I scream like a little girl and run like lightning." This brings a couple of smiles.

She hums and clicks her pen. "Wendy?"

"I straight out panic. I can't think of anything besides the fact that I absolutely cannot be left behind," she says, rather properly. "I cannot be forgotten."

"Thank you. Craig?"

He scuffs his shoes on the floor. "Fog is constricting. I can't breathe."

"Short and sweet. Thank you." She slips the pen into the clip and stand up. "That's all for talking today. Let's move onto something a little more creative. Now, I want you to illustrate as best you can the most shocking dream you've ever had."

"Even if it's gory? Or R rated?" Kenny asks.

"Especially if it's gory or R rated," she clips. "I'll bring out some paper and pencils." She stands and walks to the back of the room, where there's paper and pencils. Her skeleton legs hardly look like they can keep her upright. When she comes back, she's carrying a box of pencil crayons, some regular writing pencils, and some copy paper. She hands them out and then goes to sit at her desk, tapping away at the computer..

They all move to the tables in the center of the room and stare at the blank sheets in front of them.

Kenny draws a haphazard cat.

"I can't draw kitties," he says.

"Kitties can't draw either," Craig says. He's drawing skyscrapers with a grey pencil crayon (why not just use a pencil, Kenny thinks). They're hardly better than Kenny's cat.

"Maybe I should take this seriously," he says gloomily, lifting his elbows onto the table.

"Maybe," Craig parrots.

"Big fat help you are," he mumbles. He nudges Butters. "What are you drawing?"

"Oh, I'm drawing the snake from _The Jungle Book_, if you remember that old movie." Kenny nods. "Well, when I was a kid, I'd have dreams that he'd sneak into my room and eat me, but really slowly and horribly. He chewed me to bits! I could feel my bones breaking," he says with a shudder. "Always scared me outta my socks. Still scares me, actually."

Kenny is a little surprised. He had expected something a bit less graphic. "Wow, that's, uh, horrible," he says.

"Yup," Butters says. For being traumatized, he seems pretty at ease with this. Kenny wonders if he is breaking their promise of no half-truths at all.

He picks up his pencil and starts trying to illustrate a nightmare he had one time, but it's hard, because the dream was terrifying more by sensation than visuals. Through it, he was under the impression that he should be scared and that he had to save someone (his mom? His sister? He still doesn't know) and that if he didn't hurry up, something awful would happen, but again, he didn't know what. The dream itself was mostly a blur of panic and terror, and from time to time he'd trip over something or someone would want to talk to him and delay him from getting home, but there was never anything particularly visually bad.

After a minute or so, he decides that he should draw himself running, but make it as doom-worthy and melodramatic as possible.

Victoria stalks around the room from time to time, then settling at her computer. He thinks she's probably playing cards. Hearts, maybe. Victoria looks like a Hearts person.

Kenny scrunches two pieces of paper before he gives up and looks at Craig's again.

"What'cha drawing?" he asks, tapping the corner of his paper.

"Buildings on buildings," Craig answers.

"What."

Craig leans back in his chair and twirls his pencil around his fingers. Kenny remembers all the Science classes he wasted spinning those stupid pencils and trying to get it right.

"I dunno. When I was a kid, I'd dream that I was lost in some city. I'd walk and walk until I found the edge of the city. It just stopped. The roads would just end. Sometimes cars would drive off and fall down. So I'd look over the edge and there'd be another city under this city. Usually I'd end up jumping off and killing myself." He seems a little disgusted with himself.

"That's kind of weird," Kenny says. "Doctors aren't going to like that there's no fog in it."

Craig snorts a laugh. "They think it's so cut and paste."

Kenny notices how ignorant this is, and he thinks Craig does too, but Craig's good at those sorts of spiteful, judgemental, no-fucks-given statements. He says this for the impact, the implication that the doctors don't know their own craft, rather than the truth of it. Kenny has always wanted an acid tongue, but he's never been able to properly develop one. He's too nice, always worrying about other people's reactions. The nicest thing to say about Craig in terms of caring about others is he just doesn't do it very successfully.

Craig doesn't seem to care that Kenny doesn't respond to his statement. He starts chewing on his tongue instead. He's got all sorts of destructive little habits, Kenny's noticed over the time they've been friends; picking his cuticles, biting his lips, scratching the insides of his palms, tearing off scabs. Craig's got a ton of little scars on his hands and arms from where he's just ruined little nicks and cuts.

"Stop that, I can't concentrate," he says, pushing Craig's shoulder.

"Who says you're concentrating? You've scrunched, like, five papers," Craig replies, eyebrows raised.

"Two," Kenny corrects sullenly. "Cut it out, though."

He does. But he twirls his pencil again instead. Kenny can live with this. He draws a minimal-effort version of himself running, and colours the background black and red. He also draws his sister in a cage, just so it was clear that he was going to save her. He also draws a torturer-rapist-murderer next to her for dramatic effect.

Craig looks at it with a sort of cruel humour playing around his features. Kenny feels vulnerable. "That's sweet, McCormick. You should save me someday."

"I wouldn't save your sorry, pessimistic ass if you paid me," Kenny bites back.

"Funny, I thought you liked me," Craig says.

"Would you stop fucking flirting?" Kyle snaps from the other end of the table. He's lucky that the hospital doesn't have a no-swearing rule. Victoria still looks up just to make sure they don't start fighting. Kenny takes the opportunity to try and look at what he's drawing. It looks like a lot of red and lots of wobbly structures that might be humans. Stan also looks up, probably to see this flirting that Kyle's speaking of. His eyebrows go down when he sees that they aren't holding hands or invading each other's personal space or whatever he was expecting to see. Kenny notices his piece of paper is blank.

"Calm the Jew rage, Kyle. If you're so hot to see some gay shit, hit on your own boyfriend," Craig answers, sounding maybe a bit too excited to have someone to argue with.

"We're not fucking, Craig!"

Stan nudges him and says, "Kyle, give it a break," as if he's very used to it – which he is. He glares at Craig and Craig sneers back.

"Be civil, guys," Wendy reminds them. She doesn't even look up.

"Good luck with that," Kenny says more to himself.

Kyle goes back to his drawing fretfully, leaving Stan staring into blank space, trying to summon something of an idea. Kenny wonders if he's had a nightmare in his life. Craig, devoid of a victim, also goes back to his page, colouring lethargically.

After a while, Victoria decides they've had enough time, and collects their drawings. Kenny's is way over the top, but he thinks it gets the feeling across.

Stan hands Victoria a picture of him being groped by his dad. Randy is labelled _creepy dad_ just in case of confusion.

"It was really fucking creepy, man, but in the dream it seemed perfectly normal, and I even remember thinking, 'I wish he could fuck me later, I'm busy now,' as if it was a chore or something. But you know what's creepier? I can see him doing something like that," Stan explains, looking nauseated. Wendy hugs and consoles him, then hands in her own picture, a drawing of her trying to pack a bag to apparently catch a flight, but not being able to find everything. At the bottom of the page is a disembodied hand pushing a knife into her shins.

"Poor baby," she says to Stan. She kisses his cheek and says nothing about her own picture.

Butters has the most artistic talent of the six of them, but he draws in fast, cartoony sketches instead of utilizing his talent. There his is in his bed, being slowly and torturously chewed to death. The only real implication of artistic talent is that most of the proportions are correct, and the colouring is much better than a group therapy scribble should be. There's even shading. He tells them more or less what he told Kenny.

Kyle hands in a picture of him sitting in a red room with no doors and occupied by all of his friends' parents, who are all fucking gluttonously around him. Even the dogs are humping. To top it off, Kyle's femur is broken, as depicted by a flat-looking bandage wrapped unprofessionally around his pant leg.

"You asked for shocking, I give you shocking," he says flatly. If voices were gradients, his would be monochrome.

"My parents, oh my god, my parents," Stan whines in the background. "Kyle, you have a horrible, horrible mind."

"Shut the fuck up, Stan," Kyle says, knocking him lightly on the top of the head.

"That's kind of a shitty dream," Kenny says, attempting pity but sounding amused. Kyle glares at him.

Kenny gives her his own illustration with little comment from those around him. It's a pretty standard B grade nightmare. He's almost embarrassed by its blandness.

Craig hands his to Victoria and tells everyone the shortened version of what he told Kenny. She nods and says, "Are you guys noticing that your phobias don't necessarily have anything to do with your dreams? There are often elements of them within what's happening, such as Kyle's broken femur, or Kenny's drawing with the girl being threatened with a bottle of poison." Kenny really doesn't know what she was being threatened with, but he drew a bottle of poison for kicks. Apparently, there's symbolism in his dreams that he never even intended for.

Craig rolls his eyes. Kenny kicks his ankle and mutters, "Oh, stop," earning a sneer from Craig but nothing more.

She puts the drawings in a folder and closes it with a white and green striped paperclip. Then, she says, "That's all for today. You've got a couple of hours to yourself until the last therapy session of the day. Last one out, please shut the door. Thank you."

They herd out quietly. Butters shuts the door and they walk down to the common area, sitting around the room.

Kenny sighs and seats himself on the edge of a table. Nobody's talking, so he starts a topic everyone can relate to. "I fucking hate those sessions. It's different when you're around everyone."

"It makes you feel so open to attack," Stan agrees.

"What's the point of it, even?" Kyle groans. "It's like solitary therapy – which we already have two of per day, thank you very much – but with other people. It's fucking stupid, I think."

"Uh, I think it's to help screen out the lies from the truths," Butters says, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "You know, people act differently around their friends. They might say different things or paraphrase stuff. Or it could be the total opposite, you know, if everyone else is sharing all this stuff, you might as well too, right?" he adds.

"That's awfully simple-minded," Craig says with a hint of a sneer. "Assuming everyone is into teamwork and helping each other grow and all that cutesy-pie shit."

"You come up with something better, then," Butters snaps uncharacteristically.

"Guys, let's just go eat before we start ripping each other's heads off," Wendy says, raising an arm halfway. She looks over at Craig, exasperated eyes slightly shadowed with the wear of sleeplessness and stress. "And would you _please_ fucking be civil? Nobody needs that kind of attitude."

Craig looks a little taken aback, as if he's not used to being seriously scolded. She ignores him and walks over to the doors leading into the dining area, and slowly, people start trailing along after her. Kenny considers grabbing Craig and telling him to be less of a downer, but he decides to just leave him for now to wallow in self-pity. He catches up to Kyle.

"Hey, Kyle."

"Hey," Kyle says.

"You know what's for dinner today?"

"I checked the schedule yesterday; it's like, stir fry or something," he replies.

"Oh, cool. The food here's kind of good, hey?" Kenny says, but in truth, when your meals are irregular, all food is good.

"It's okay," Kyle says with a one-shouldered shrug. He arrives at the buffet and grabs two plates, handing one to Kenny.

"Thanks, Kyle," he says, and in turn hands him a fork.

"Do they have chopsticks?" Kyle asks, eyeing his fork like it's a foreign object.

"Don't think so," Kenny says with a glance around. "You'll have to settle for a fork, princess."

"You'd be pissed off too if you actually knew how to use chopsticks," Kyle grumbles, scooping noodles and vegetables onto his plate.

"I do! Kind of," he retorts. He did learn at one point, but he's had so few opportunities to utilize his ability that it more or less slipped away. He remembers the theory, but he'd need a pair to retrain his fingers.

"You don't," Kyle scoffs. He takes a glass off of a tray and fills it with water. Ice cubes clink into the glass and splash droplets over the side. Kyle notices them, but makes only a half-hearted attempt to clean them up. Kenny opts for a purple drink that might be grape juice.

Plates and glasses full, they glance around the eating area, which is spattered with staff. Dr. Kelly sits at a table only ten feet away from where they're standing, chatting and laughing with Maria, the pretty nurse they met on the first day, and a male nurse well over six feet who Kenny hasn't seen before.

Kyle catches his eyes and they migrate away from the nurses and doctors to a farther-away table. Stan joins them in a minute, but Butters and Wendy sit at a table behind them with Craig, who seems to fine now, if his dignity ever was injured.

Stan eats quietly and quickly, constantly glancing over his shoulder to the other table.

"Stan," Kyle says, "let it go. Your girlfriend is talking to Craig Tucker. So fucking what."

Stan doesn't answer right away, but he turns around and sighs heavily into his hands. "It's just that-"

"Besides, I'm pretty sure he's probably gay," Kyle says casually.

There's something about the way he says it that tells them he's serious as opposed to just making fun of Craig. Kenny swallows and looks at Kyle, who is incredibly smug, as if he's just succeeded in carrying out some sort of massive revenge instead of making an educated guess about an acquaintance's sexuality. He says, "What makes you think?"

"I dunno. He just kind of seems, you know. Like someone who doesn't like girls."

Stan shakes his head and clicks his tongue. "I don't really think so, Kyle. He's a douchebag, but that doesn't make him gay."

"And you're right because?" Kyle prods, waiting for him to go on.

Stan huffs. "I don't know, he's had girlfriends and stuff. He just doesn't really seem _gay_."

"I'm kind of gay," Kenny throws in.

"But he was never super into his girlfriends. He dated Red like, twice, and the first time lasted a month and the other lasted three weeks. And then he dated Bebe, but-"

"I don't get how he did that. He's not even really good-looking," Stan sighs. "She doesn't just take anyone."

"Whatever, Stan, fact is, he did. But it only lasted what, a week?" Kyle points out, pointing his fork around as he talks.

"It was more like a month," Kenny says.

"Nah, it was like, a month, dude," Stan says.

"He made out with some guy at Annie's party last year, remember?" Kyle says.

"Oh yeah." Stan leans his elbows on the table and creates a defence. "Well, come on, man, there was beer and shit there. It's not like he was super sober. Do you know who that guy was?"

"Luke Peterson. He's in our English class," Kenny supplies, twirling a noodle.

"Luke or someone. You know, Luke? Our English class?" Kyle says.

"Oh, right. But anyway, it doesn't mean he's gay. I think he's straight, but just too much of an emotionally reclusive tool to show proper affection to anyone."

"I just really think he's gay," Kyle says, looking at the other table.

"I just really don't," Stan says, also looking towards them.

"I slept with a guy, once," Kenny says glumly, pushing his nearly-clean plate aside and slumping forward on the table.

"You really don't, huh."

"I really, really don't."

"Fuck you guys," Kenny mutters, getting up and taking his plate and empty glass to the bucket labeled _dirty dishes_. He's not sure if they even notice him leaving. They ask sometimes why he's friends with Craig, and he usually says something about mutual interests, but when they get caught up in their girly-gossip like this, it's obvious. Craig always listens when they talk, and Stan and Kyle can get trapped in their own little world faster than the click of a light switch.

By now, they're serving dessert, so Kenny takes a skinny slice of some sort of pie (it's red, which could mean raspberry or cherry or rhubarb or strawberry or) and sits down next to Wendy.

"Hey," she says as he duck over to peck her cheek.

"Hi, Ken!" Butters grins when he says this, and Kenny has to melt a little bit inside. Who can't love Butters' smile?

"Hey," Craig greets, and he even smiles, but quietly; a murmur of a smile. Kenny smiles back at all of them, at all the people Stan and Kyle just live to gossip about. He doesn't care who's gay and who's dating who and who's a loser. He just knows they all like him.

"What's that?" Butters asks, pointing to Kenny's pie. Kenny hands him the fork.

"Try it."

Butters does, and makes a bit of a face. "Cherry. I never much liked cherry."

Kenny laughs and takes the fork back. "I do, sometimes. My mom used to make good cherry pies, but she hasn't made one for a long time."

"I'll eat it," Wendy offers, and Kenny slides the plate over. She takes a bite and shrugs.

"How is it?" Craig asks.

"Mediocre. You want it?"

"Is that actually a question, or are you giving me the pie?"

"Astute inferring, Craig," she says, and pushes it to him, fork balanced neatly on the rim of the plate. He shrugs and starts twirling the fork.

"What made you move, Ken?" Butters asks, tipping his head over to the other table.

Kenny shrugs and takes Craig's fork and plate from him. "They got kind of over-involved in shit."

"Were they talking about us? They were looking over here and muttering and making faces," Wendy asks.

"Mm hmm. They do that."

"God, they're worse than the girls I know. What were they talking about?"

"I don't really want to repeat it, Wendy," Kenny says, taking a sliver of cherries off the end and chewing briefly before continuing. "It's not bad or anything – well, not really bad, anyway – I just don't like gossiping."

"Now you've got me intrigued," she says, her brows disappearing into her bangs.

"Stan got jealous that you were sitting with Craig and Kyle consoled him," he deadpans.

"Oh." She seems disappointed that it isn't something more than that.

"Can I have that back?" Craig says, and takes the fork from Kenny before he can answer.

"No problem, Craig," Kenny says, well after Craig starts eating the pie that nobody else wants. "Just go ahead and take shit."

"You took it from me first. Why are you so moody?" he asks, swallowing.

There are many answers; Stan and Kyle are drama queens; Kenny feels kind of worthless after having Stan and Kyle ignore him so blatantly; Craig might be gay, and the more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes. He's considered the idea before – one of Kenny's hobbies is to walk around the school and think, "Hey, what if those two people were dating?" whenever he sees pairs of friends walking together – but not seriously. It's dumb, but the first thought that pops into his head is _Craig's gay and I'm gay and we could potentially date?_ He doesn't want to, really (there are several things that lead one to assume Craig's a pretty shitty boyfriend), but he thinks about it casually, the way he thinks about what he'd do if a tornado tore through his little town, in that _this is a thing that could happen_ kind of way.

"Because this place is shitty and I'm feeling ignored," is what he eventually comes out with. Craig smiles a bit and slices off another forkful of pie.

"Don't worry, we love you," he says, corners of his mouth still tweaked upwards. It makes Kenny's stomach twinge, and he doesn't like that at all.

"I feel kind of sickish," he says, putting his elbows on the table and cradling his head in his hands.

"That's too bad," Butters says sympathetically, reaching across the table to pat his head. "You have a headache or something?"

"I just feel kind of overall gross," he says. He's not even sure if he's lying or not.

"You'll feel worse in just a sec here," Craig says. "Don't look up."

Kenny does anyway, and there's Dr. Kelly walking over to the two tables. He stop in front of them and smiles, them speaks.

"Could I have your attention, please?" Stan and Kyle, still caught up bickering about something (they may have moved on from Craig being gay, but Kenny somehow thinks not), jump at the sound of his voice and look towards him. Today his shirt is pastel blue, and his pants, beige. He looks like a dentist.

"Tonight, you're excused from evening therapy. We're going to spend this evening setting up the first round of treatment." Here, all the nurses and other staff clap and smile proudly. It's unsettling. "It will take place all through tomorrow. You'll be excused from all other daily therapy sessions, including group therapy. That's all, enjoy your evening." He goes back over to his table, smiling all the way. Maria and the tall nurse start talking in excited voices.

Kenny puts his head on the table. Shortly, he feels Wendy's nails brushing his scalp soothingly. She doesn't say _it'll be okay_. He waits for Butters to say something along those lines. It would be in line with his ever-positive personality. Seconds go by and he doesn't. Nobody says anything. There's just the heavy, all-encompassing silence sitting on top of the din of all the staff. Kenny wonders if maybe he should sit up and look at someone until he hears Craig say, "Hey, hey, it'll be fine."

He lifts his head to see Craig with a hand on Butters' shoulder the way someone who's not used to touching people does when they're trying to be comforting. Butters is rubbing his eyes and clearing away an explosion of tears. It strikes Kenny that Butters has learned to cry quietly. He hiccups and swabs his cheeks roughly.

"I'm okay now," he snivels. Of course he's not, but Craig drops his hand onto the table anyway, perhaps too quickly. He's an introvert's introvert.

Kenny wants to console him, but he's out of words.

Stan and Kyle get up and walk over to them.

"We're just gonna go into the other room," Stan says. His eyes are wide and nervous. Kyle looks normal, perhaps irritated, even.

"We're coming," Kenny says, standing up. He looks over his shoulder at the other at his table "Come on."

Wendy gets up and goes to Stan like a magnet. She wraps her arms around him, and for a while they just stand there in a tight embrace, the kind only lovers participate in. Kenny helps Butters up and watches them. It's been a while since he's held someone like that.

_(if you had a boyfriend you could hold him like that)_

Butters sniffles and wakes him up from his reverie. He finds his words and says, "Don't cry, you're too pretty to cry."

Butters smiles and says, "I'm trying." He wipes his eyes again with the sleeve of his sweater. "I'll be okay."

"You sure, sugar?" Kenny asks, wiping away a stray tear track with his thumb. A bloom of colour comes to Butters' cheeks, but it's not hard to make Butters blush.

"Yeah, I'm sure," he says more or less stably. He turns from Kenny's hand and says, "I just need a second by myself."

"Yeah, of course," Kenny says with nod, and pushes him lightly away. Butters falls behind, looking at his feet.

Craig comes up next to him wordlessly.

"Look who's being moody now," Kenny says.

"I don't really know what to think," Craig says, sighing out of the corner of his mouth. "It's a hospital, these are doctors, so I really doubt they're going to do anything really horrible and traumatizing, but this whole place is just creepy to a new extreme. Fucking treatment and therapy and drawing nightmares with pencil crayons. I gotta get outta here."

"Tell me about it. I wanna get high," Kenny comments. He ambles into the rec room and scans it for a place to sit.

"I wanted to bring Madeline, but I decided not to in the end," Craig mumbles. Madeline – Craig's bong – has been Craig's for a couple years, when he bought her from the pawn shop on Main Street, the one that Stan's uncle owns, and though Craig doesn't smoke a lot, he treasures her. She's made of blue glass, and when they get high together, all Craig can talk about is how the blue of Madeline's body is the same blue as Kenny's eyes. Craig talks a lot of shit when he's high, but Kenny's always liked that one thing; the way he says it while the smoke slips between his lips might be the prettiest thing Kenny's ever seen.

"Wow. You actually considered bringing a bong into a hospital," Kenny says flatly. "Dr. Kelly would probably take her away anyway."

"Just as well, then," he admits, shrugging. Kenny sits down at a table while Craig drifts over to a shelf full of books and other things. "Hey, cards."

"Cards?" Kenny parrots, looking up.

"Mm hmm. What can you play?"

Kenny leans back in his chair while Craig sits down. "Um, Hearts, Solitaire, Old Maid, Crazy Eights, Go Fish, Blackjack, Poker, I think, if you refresh my memory."

"Let's play Blackjack. I'm not really in the mood to explain Poker to you," Craig says. He shakes the cards out and starts shuffling, but not the way Kenny usually does, not the sloppy overhand shuffle that everyone uses. This is something different, more elegant.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"It's called a Riffle shuffle. Not that hard," he says, but he says it in a sort of proud way.

"Whoa. Do you know any card tricks?" he demands, excited by the notion that Craig is good with cards.

"Uh, a few sleight of hand tricks. Nothing special."

"Nothing special my ass," Kenny snorts. "That's cool!"

"Could you guys get over here? We're having a meeting," Stan shouts before Craig can reply.

"Oh. Fine, ruin our card-playing," Kenny mumbles, grabbing Craig and towing him along to the couches, where the rest are sitting. Craig brings the deck with him and shuffles them absently. "So what's up?"

"Were you listening to Dr. Kelly at all?" Stan snaps. "We're starting treatment, in that fucking room he wouldn't show to use, through those fucking doors right over there!" He points down the hallway where none of them have dared to go so far.

"Oh, calm the fuck down," Kyle says. "It won't be so horrible. It'll probably just be a thing where you have to face your phobia so they can see exactly how you react."

"Think about it, Kyle: they're putting you in a room with the thing that scares you more than anything else in the world. Of course it'll be fucking horrible!"

"It sounds creepy. What kind of place separates therapy from treatment? Isn't it all treatment?" Wendy says. "I'm scared."

Kenny notices Butters standing a little ways behind Wendy. He's the kind of person who needs to speak or else people don't really notice him there. But now, his optimist brain has nothing to add to the discussion.

"God, what do we do?" Stan says, looking to the side. His mouth is flattened into a thin line.

"We wait for tomorrow," Craig deadpans. "At least we don't have to go to therapy."

"What time is it?" Wendy asks. Craig pulls out his phone.

"It's quarter to seven," he announces, stowing it away into his pocket again. Stan looks desperately around.

"What the hell do we do for the rest of the evening? I'm too uptight to think about anything else."

"Let's watch a movie," Wendy says. "Yeah, that's what we'll do. I'll pick a movie and we'll just watch it for the rest of the evening. No milling around being miserable. Just movie-watching." She gets up and goes over to a shelf near the large TV in front of the other couch, the one they didn't sit on that first day. Kenny watches her and wonders if making herself busy is just her way of masking any messy emotions.

"Do we want something light or heavy?" she calls.

"Just something long to eat up the evening," Stan answers.

She comes back with _The Hunt for Red October_, which maybe is not the most comforting movie to watch, but it's over two hours long and therefore fits Stan's request. She puts it in the DVD player and sits on a couch with Stan and Kyle and Butters. The lack of space is not bad enough for her to choose not sitting with her boyfriend, and she squeezes in on the far side between the arm of the couch and Stan's hip. Kenny and Craig claim the other couch.

When the movie is beginning to wind down, Kenny starts losing interest. He's seen it before; the plot is at its final bend and should be winding down soon. He looks down to see what everyone else is doing. Wendy again has her head on Stan shoulder and she's dozing lightly. Stan absentmindedly rubs her hands, concentrating on the screen the way someone who's seeing it for the first time does. Kyle smiles slightly while he watches; he's quite familiar with the film. It's one of his favourites. Kenny forgets when he told them that, but it's in his memory, somehow. He's not entirely sure if it's correct, but it seems right. On end of the couch, Butters twists his sleeves in his hands and watches with waning interest. He picks at his cuticles. Craig watches with his usual monotonous awareness, smiling at lines he finds witty, frowning occasionally.

_(hey so Craig might be gay hmm? how do you feel about this?)_

He looks at the screen and directs his thoughts away.

When it ends and the credits roll, he climbs off the couch and yawns.

"What time is it now?"

"Figured you'd ask," Craig says, and checks his phone. "Four after nine."

"Kind of early to go to bed," Stan sighs. "But I feel better now."

"We could watch something else while we wait for lights out," Wendy says, stretching. She woke up in the last few minutes of the film.

"Okay. I don't really have the energy for much else."

Kenny wonders if he should stay or go. Another hour and a half of fretting over Craig's sexuality between watching the movie doesn't sound exactly nice, but what else would he do? Read a book? Fuck it, he'll stay.

Kyle gets up and goes over to DVD player. He ejects the disc and puts it back into its case, then goes over to the shelf full of other movies.

"How about _The Shining_? Feel like something scary?" he calls.

"Are you crazy? With the shit that's going down tomorrow?" she questions with wild eyes. Kyle apologizes meekly and pulls out a different movie.

"_Footloose_?"

"No. I saw it a week ago."

"_Fido_? That zombie movie?"

"Ew."

"Uh. _The Firm_?"

"Oh, come on, Kyle."

"It has Tom Cruise in it!"

"Kyle, I don't like lawyer-y movies. Pick something else," she complains.

"I like lawyer-y movies," Kenny says. "And there's a sex scene on a beach. And a fat guy seducing a pretty girl. Then she poisons him. Also there's Tom Cruise, who's all suave and badass and sexy. Let's watch it."

"Yeah, let's just watch it, Wendy. Even if you don't like lawyer movies, you can just look at Tom Cruise and go, 'Ooh, I wish he was my boyfriend, ooh,'" Stan mimics.

She huffs in defeat. "Fine, whatever. Tom Cruise it is."

Kyle grins and sticks it in.

The movie is actually long – longer than _The Hunt for Red October_, and longer than Kenny remembers it being – and a few minutes before it ends, a nurse comes through and shoos them off to their respective bedrooms.

"Night, guys. Prepare yourselves for tomorrow," Kenny says just before he enters his quarters. It's kind of a dick thing to do, remind them of tomorrow's event last thing, but it slips out before he can stop it. The others groan and swear at him, and then tag a little goodnight onto the end of it. He sniggers as he goes in, stupidly pleased by his comment. Craig shuts the door behind them and leans against it, heaving a sigh.

"So, tomorrow," he says.

"Yup."

Craig bites the corner of his lip like he's going to continue, but he smiles and shakes his bangs out of his eyes. He keeps them styled up and out of his eyes, but by the end of the day, whatever gel or spray he uses gives up and they fall flat.

"You should leave your lips alone," Kenny says.

"I'll keep it in mind, Mom," Craig teases.

"I'm serious. They've just gotten worse since that first session. Leave them the fuck alone or they'll get infected." Craig rolls his bottom lip into his mouth. It slides out through his teeth.

_(would you could you kiss those lips?)_

Kenny looks Craig in the eye, and he looks back coolly. It's become a stare down over fucking lip-biting.

"Don't you have ChapStick or something?" he asks.

"No. I always end up eating it off." He licks his lips quickly. Kenny feels bad for attacking such an obvious insecurity, but he can't stop. Craig takes hold of his bottom lip again. When he releases it, a scab is gone and blood is welling up.

"Seriously," he says. "Stop."

"I can't fucking help it, Kenny." He licks it off. It smears over the rest of his lip.

_(do you know how easy it would be to lean forward and lick the blood off his mouth?)_

This is going somewhere bad with rapid speed, and Kenny opens his mouth and lets it go wherever it wants. God, anything to think about something else.

"Did you know Kyle thinks you're gay?"

_(what a fantastic segue)_

"Oh. Well, can't say I didn't see it coming," Craig says. He walks past Kenny and sits on one of the beds, the one he claimed to be his a few days earlier.

"No?" he asks.

"Nah. I'm sure he's thought that since I dumped Bebe," he answers, kicking off his shoes. One hits the wall with a dull _thud_ and the other lands on the floor. "I mean, who dumps Bebe?"

"You dumped her? I thought she dumped you."

Craig makes a face and says, "No, she's kind of . . . hard to take, I guess. She was always like, 'Let's have lunch together, Craig,' and 'Come shopping with me, Craig,' and I kind of hated that."

"Yeah, you've told me before. Girls do that, man," Kenny says. He slips his old Vans off and lies down on his bed.

"I'm sure guys do too." Kenny looks up too fast and looks too confused. Craig holds up his hands and says, "Hey, don't assume so goddamn fast, I never said I'd dated one. Jesus, Kenny."

"Well, they kind of do, so," Kenny says, lying back down and feeling stupid.

"You'd know?"

He bites his tongue and regrets saying it. "Look, I slept with someone once and he texted me the next day so we could, I don't know, date or something. I told him to fuck off, and that's the closest I've ever been to dating a dude."

"Wow. That sounds like fun."

"Yeah, it was a fucking blast."

"He didn't live in South Park, did he? Nobody's gay in South Park."

"No, I went to a party when I was staying in Denver with my brother."

"I figured."

Kenny hesitates before talking again, because he doesn't really want to continue this conversation, but speaks anyway: "Do you remember when you made out with Luke Peterson?"

"Yeah. What about it?" Craig says through a sigh.

"Oh, I dunno. Were you drunk or what?"

"I was sober, if you'll believe that. I was the driver."

"No shit?" Kenny says. "Don't tell Kyle, he'll nominate you for Faggot of the Year."

"I'm not planning on it. But, I dunno, he was there and I was there and I was like, 'Hey, why the hell not, nobody remembers this shit anyway.' So I guess I just kind of did it? It wasn't really all that nice. I mean, it was _nice_ – I guess? – but I don't think I'd do it again, like maybe I would if the situation was right. Oh, fuck, I'm rambling. Sorry for all the unnecessary info."

"No, it's okay, man," Kenny says carefully, eyeing Craig. He's flustered, which looks strange on Craig. Kenny's not sure if he's ever seen Craig anything less than blasé, and even in potentially awkward situations he just creates an escape for himself and takes it as soon as he can. The only reason Craig can do this so effectively is that he doesn't mind being rude. If he doesn't like a situation, he doesn't stick around until he can leave politely, he just says, "Oh, I have to be somewhere," and runs away. Kenny's seen him do this. His ability to not give a single fuck about the feelings of others is legendary.

He allows Craig several long seconds to regain composure and says, "Do you wanna make out?"

Craig frowns and says, "No, man."

He can't say he wasn't expecting that, but it still makes him a little disappointed. He thinks about what he could say next, but he's too late, and Craig gets up and walks over to his backpack and extracts some homework.

"I think I'll have a shower," Kenny says.

"Go for it," Craig replies. Kenny gets up and goes over to the bathroom, and when he shuts the door, he breathes a sigh of relief that he just prays Craig doesn't hear.

_(now wasn't that a good time?)_

_(not really huh)_

_(you could have just been making out that whole time, hey hey)_

Kenny claps his hands over his temples and swears under his breath, _god fucking damnit can you just fucking _stop, and then he turns on the water and strips down. His boxers fall to the floor unceremoniously, and he steps into the shower without waiting for it to get hot. There's a bottle of shampoo that might belong to Craig, and it might have been provided by the hospital, but honestly, he wouldn't know. It smells like peppermint and lathers really well, so he doesn't care. He thinks about all those endless bottles of shampoo for girls, and he hasn't the slightest clue why they would need so many kinds. Extra volume. Curl enhancing. Shine boost. Hydrating. He understands vanity – he's also spent much too long in front of the mirror – but he doesn't know why they would need so many different kinds of shampoo, and at the end of the day, are the results really that different? He's used hand soap before, and it's gotten his hair clean. It doesn't really make his hair the softest, but he doesn't get people beating down the doors to touch his hair that often.

Thoughts of the variety he's been living with through this evening go through his head from time to time _(hey you think Craig has soft hair?)_ and he can't even stop them anymore. He stands pitifully under the showerhead and considers jacking off, but the way things are going, he'll probably imagine Craig while doing it, and that's enough to dissuade him. He turns off the water after a while and get out. White towels hang on the racks. He takes one and does a mediocre job of drying off, but he does do a slightly better job on his hair. He hates having water drip down his neck.

His clothes lie on the ground. He considers just walking out, skin and all, but his self-consciousness gets the best of him (there's a difference between being secure and being comfortable walking into a room with your dick out) and he dresses. His shirt sticks to his skin.

"Hey, I'm done," he says, walking back into the room. He stops by his bag to fish around for one of the books he crammed in there. Yeah, he doesn't really read, but you always bring books when you travel. It's an unspoken rule.

"I heard the water turn off," Craig says. He's sitting cross-legged on the bed, scribbling notes on a piece of paper. A few books are open in front of him, a Biology text and a binder.

"Doing homework?" he asks. He immediately regrets it.

Craig gives him the sort of look he deserves for such a stupid question. "No, I'm golfing."

"God, give me a break," Kenny mutters.

"No, that was way too perfect." Craig smiles to himself and his shoulders shake in a silent chortle.

"Maybe I'm way too perfect," Kenny says, flipping his damp hair and trying his best at a steamy, lusty look.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Craig dismisses, looking back to his textbook.

"Maybe you're way too perfect."

_(what the fuck was that!)_

His heartbeat picks up and he can feel his ears heat up, but he's the only one who's embarrassed. Craig snorts a laugh from the bed and says, "If I was perfect, I would have remembered to bring something to smoke. God, I'm dying."

"You didn't even bring cigarettes?" Kenny asks, desperate for normal conversation that doesn't change his pulse or redden his skin.

"No. I just didn't think of it, I guess. There're two in my jacket pocket that I guess I just left there before I left South Park, but I'm going to save them for when the shit hits the fan," he says. "God, I'm stupid."

"It's okay. I was going to bring some, but I didn't have any money, so I couldn't buy any."

They exist in silence for about half an hour, until Craig puts his things away and wanders into the bathroom. The water runs. He can hear him brushing his teeth, and it hits him that he forgot. He'll do it tomorrow; he doesn't much feel like leaving his safe little mattress.

Craig comes back in and says, "I'm going to bed. You can leave the light on, I don't care."

Kenny closes his book. "No, I'm going to too. Night."

"Night." Craig pulls off his shirt and climbs between the sheets in his jeans, and Kenny thinks it must be uncomfortable, but he thinks about it more, and he's pretty sure he's seen Craig do it before. He can't imagine it. Kenny's not the kind of person that can sleep in a lot of clothes; the most he can stand is boxers.

Kenny gets up and turns off the light, and in the dark, he undresses and slides in. It feels like a hotel bed; too fluffy, too soft. Too perfect.

_(maybe you're way too perfect)_

He rolls over and tries his best to sleep.


	4. Running and Moving Too Fast

**Wow so this took a much longer time than I thought. This chapter is, however, about triple the regular size and stuffed with fear and a little bit of backstory. Enjoy the ride!**

* * *

Kyle wakes not to the alarm he's set on the digital clock on the end table between his bed and Stan's, but to an incessant tapping, like a pencil to the top of a desk. He's familiar with this sound; there's always someone who taps their fucking pencil all through a test, and while he scribbles down equations and theories, there's someone in the background going on with that _tap, tap, tap_. For a while, he just rolls over and prays it'll stop. When long minutes go by and still it remains relentless, he sits up and looks around. Stan is drumming his fingers on the end table while he looks at something on his iPod.

"What in the name of Christ are you doing?" Kyle growls, flopping back down on the mattress.

"Huh?" Stan taps the screen and pulls a blue earbud out of his left ear. "What am I doing?"

"Yes, what are you doing," Kyle reiterates, laying his arm over his eyes.

"I'm watching a video Wendy and I took a week before we got here."

Kyle actually knows what this video is. He watched it the day before they left, when Stan was at his house and left his iPod idly on the arm of the couch while he went to the bathroom. Kyle had picked it up and scrolled through his photos, waiting for him to come back, and then came across a video. He hit play, and Wendy's voice leaked out of the shitty speaker.

"_You ready to go?"_ she said, and the camera shifted shakily from a pamphlet for the hospital to her face.

"_No. I'll never be ready,"_ Stan said, from behind the camera. Kyle had smiled unconsciously at the note of panic in his voice.

"_But you will be when you're there. Challenges are just things we have to face, and I know you'll be brave enough. You're always brave enough."_

"_This is different, Wendy . . ."_

"_It's not." _The camera stopped shaking as she finished her sentence. _"You'll pull through, hospital or not, phobias or not. And I'll love you whether it works or not, if you cry or break down, if you can't do it. I'll always be there for you."_

There was a second of silence. She smiled. The camera zoomed in to her face.

"_Don't be afraid,"_ she whispered, and then the video ended.

Kyle had stared at it for a second, and then put the iPod to sleep and back to its original spot on the couch. If he had a girlfriend, he would want her to make him a video of encouragement to look at in his darkest times.

"What time is it?" he says, feeling much more agreeable than he did a second ago, but not awake enough to roll over and look at the clock.

Stan pauses before answering, waiting tentatively for that sweet _don't be afraid_, genuine and soft-spoken.

"It's 6:23."

"Oh, I might as well get up," Kyle admits. His alarm is set only seven minutes later. "You want the shower?"

"No, go ahead, dude," Stan says absently. Kyle flops out of bed and sits on the floor a while. He's terrifically unmotivated in the early hours despite his ambitious nature. Minutes pass before he finds it in him to scoot over to his bags and pull out some clothes.

"Where do you think we can get laundry done here?"

Stan hits the home button and the video disappears. "What? That was kinda out of the blue."

"This shirt smells like shit," Kyle sneers, and throws it at Stan. "Here, smell."

"I don't really care about what the pits of your shirts smell like, dude," Stan says, and starts wrapping his earbuds around his iPod.

"You should. It smells like Febreze and sweat."

"Why can't you wear normal deodorant that doesn't smell like air freshener?" Stan asks, sliding off the bed and crouching next to Kyle. "I would buy you wheelbarrows of Old Spice, man. Just say the word and it's done."

"Old Spice smells like jocks to me," Kyle shoots back.

"But you think I smell nice, and I'm a jock and I wear Old Spice," Stan retorts.

"Go away, it's too early in the morning for logical shenanigans," Kyle sighs, picking up his pile of clothes and walking to the bathroom.

"I've been up for like, an hour!"

"I'm sure you've been up for like, twenty minutes. Go brush your hair or something, it's all cowlicky."

"Oh, it is?" Stan says, glancing at a mirror mounted on the wall opposite the beds. "Oh, it is."

"Exactly. Now, go away, I need to sterilize myself," Kyle says, and shuts the door behind him.

Stan showers in the evening. Kyle has no idea why he does this; he is a firm believer that morning showers clean you better than night time showers, and that they are an effective way of waking one up. Also, it gives him the opportunity to scrub away all the drool lines from the past night away. He thinks it might be a jock thing, showering as soon as the game's up, or, rather, the day is done.

Kyle spends five minutes in the shower. In fifth grade he wrote a report about how much water can be saved by taking shorter showers, and even though Stan's the environment buff, not him, that report never quite left him. He dries off and pulls his clothes on. He also spends as much time as he has the patience for blow-drying his hair, but three minutes pass before he becomes utterly fed up with his awful mess of a hairstyle and turns the hair dryer off.

"Stan, the bathroom is yours," he calls out as he tosses last night's sleepwear onto his bags. There's a sort of liberty in not having someone squawk at him to fold his clothes and put them away neatly.

Stan walks over, fully clothed in artfully faded boot-cut jeans (frayed at the edges) and one of his many sports team hoodies, sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Besides the sports hoodie, he looks sort of like a passive hippie, all barefooted and messy-haired and scruffy-faced. He hasn't shaved yet.

"You harboured my brush in the bathroom and I couldn't get it," he says, padding past Kyle and into the cloudy bathroom.

"You know, you could have just came in and got it. There is a shower curtain, Stan," Kyle says, finger-combing his hair.

"Oh, right. It's early and today is going to hell in a handbasket," he defends, smoothing down his flyaways. "I don't have time for congruent thoughts."

"Shave while you're in there," Kyle calls, because Stan will forget otherwise. "I don't know why you're so concerned about this, it's not going to be anything super terrible," he murmurs, sitting on the bed.

"But it'll be super terrifying," Stan replies from the bathroom.

"You're super terrifying."

Stan scoffs. "That was super mature."

"You're super mature."

"Kyle, stop."

"Super stop."

"Just how high are you?" Stan accuses, walking back in. His floppy black hair is neatly brushed out. Kyle hasn't physically brushed his hair in months. His jewfro explodes when he tries anything but running his fingers through it.

"I'm not high at all, I'm just tired," he says. "Do you think we could just hang around the common room for a while instead of being cooped up in here?"

"Nope, we're not allowed out until seven," Stan replies, rooting through his bag and extracting a bottle of shaving cream and a reusable razor.

"Why the fuck not?"

"'Cause they're all gay and they all have steamy orgies until 6:50, then they clean up and let us out," Stan says, attempting a straight face but failing.

"Ew, Stan, no. Craig's gay and that's all."

"No, he's not. Kenny is," Stan says, regaining composure and nodding sagely.

"Oh, he is, isn't he," Kyle muses. "Right, right."

"What time is it, I'm so restless," Stan complains, getting up and going back into the bathroom.

Kyle looks at the clock. "6:39," he whines. "Why is time so slow?"

"Wait until I'm done shaving and then we can play Fruit Ninja," Stan says. Kyle waits patiently on the bed for a few seconds, then gets bored and watches Stan shave instead. Most people might become unnerved by this, but it doesn't bother Stan in the least, mostly because Kyle does it so often. They talk about the latest achievement Stan beat and then, when Stan is hairless and clean, they sit back on his bed and play Fruit Ninja for the remaining minute. As soon as the wakeup call goes off (it sounds like a fire alarm and makes both of them jump every time), the doors unlock automatically with a heavy-sounding click. They race off the bed and wrestle for the door handle, but to them, it's not just wrestling for the door, it's wrestling for freedom.

When they burst out of the room, they laugh and fall against the walls until Stan's face turns sour and he says, "Why the fuck did I want to leave? Now I have to face those fucking doctors and shit."

"Because freedom, dude. You were going to choke on that room if you spent a second more in there," Kyle says, slapping his shoulder. "Don't be so insecure. Everything will be fine."

"You sound like Wendy," he mutters.

Down the hall, a door opens and Wendy and Butters walk over, looking worn out and deflated. They trudge over with heavy feet.

"Hey, guys," Stan says. "You okay?"

"No," she says. "We were up nearly all night fretting about today." She doesn't lean into Stan. She just stands there, looking like a zombie.

"Yeah, we slept for an hour or so 'fore she said asked if I was awake, and I was, so we got up and had a depressing slumber party," Butters says. His short hair is turned in all sorts of directions, a sure sign of a night of tossing. Kyle wants to say something nice, something along the sympathetic-empathetic variety, but with his social skills, it's likely to come out lacking in both departments. He leaves the talking to Stan.

"Kyle and I woke up about half an hour ago; we did our fair share of fretting," Stan says, nodding. It's not true, per se — they ghosted over the subject once, the way Kyle remembers it — but it's comforting.

"I'm so upset and I look awful!" Wendy cries, finally falling to Stan's side. "I'm a mess, oh my god."

Kyle wants to agree, but he holds his tongue. He respects and likes Wendy enough, but he's not sure how to feel when she and Stan go into we're-a-couple mode. He much prefers Wendy when she's wearing her blazers and tying her hair back, and when she labours over calculus and challenges the teachers' opinions. He makes an unflattering face at them, but they don't notice, because Stan is petting her hair and telling her she never looks awful, and Wendy's got her nose buried in his shoulder, dead to the world outside of Stan.

Down the hall, Craig and Kenny's door opens and the two come out in a pace not quite like Stan and Kyle's, and yet not the zombie trudge of Wendy and Butters. Kenny's light blue eyes are dull and empty, and he has hollows under them that match Craig's.

"Morning," he says with a world-weary smile. The replies are just as vague. He looks them all over and laughs breathily. "At least I don't look the worst of us."

"We've been up since forever," Wendy complains. Butters bobs his head in agreement. Kenny nods knowingly and pulls her out of Stan's arms to give her a quick squeeze, the sort that looks like it might like to become a truly comforting embrace, but everyone knows better than to linger over Wendy when Stan's around.

"Pretty girls shouldn't be scared," he murmurs, and lets her go. She smiles. Leaving her to Stan, he moves to Butters and pushes his hair back into some form of neatness.

"And what's your story, sugar?" he asks gently.

"I, uh - I got no story," he says, red seeping his face like water creeping up a pair of jeans.

"You scared?" Kenny asks, still chasing his hands through his hair.

"Well, who isn't?" Butters replies, his eyes on Kenny's.

"You'll be fine," he says, and pulls his hands from Butters' hair. He returns to his spot next to Craig and rubs his eyes. Craig says _are you guys dating yet_ under his breath and sniggers while Kenny gives him an exasperated look.

"Today's the fucking day, I guess," he states. "Who's excited?"

"Everyone, practically," Stan mumbles.

"Let's go to the common area," Kyle says. He starts walking that way, and the group follows apathetically. They scatter around the room. Everyone mulls over their state of mind semi-privately, in pairs or more or less alone. Stan. Kyle plops down next to Stan and tries for an empathetic sort of smile.

"It won't be that bad, Stan," he says reassuringly. "Look, they'll probably just ask you to hold a snake or something."

"But I don't want to hold a snake. I want to hide. I want to go home and never see this place again," Stan says glumly. Kyle briefly is irritated by the way he channels emotion. If it was just him and Kyle, he would be much less melodramatic.

"You don't want to go home after all this," Kyle says, a bit snippily. Stan doesn't seem to notice.

"When do you think they'll start calling people?" he says.

"Probably after we eat."

"What do we do until then?"

"Craig and Kenny are playing cards, apparently," he says, pointing to Kenny, who's tossing a pack to himself and suggesting Blackjack to Craig. "Butters is biting his nails. Wendy's looking for a book."

"What do _I_ do?"

"I don't know, eat your hands or something. I don't care."

"That's like what Butters is doing. Don't encourage me to develop self-destructive habits," Stan sneers. It's an odd expression on Stan's face

"You wanna play cards too?" he asks after a while.

"I don't really know any card games," Kyle admits. "Like, unless you want to play Goldfish or-"

"Go Fish," Stan corrects lazily.

"-Go Fish, whatever, or Solitaire, I can also play Solitaire."

"Can we play cooperative Solitaire?"

Kyle shrugs. "Sure, dude."

They lose two games before the meal bell (a series of four or five rings not unlike Kyle's doorbell) goes, and they all get up robotically and head towards the dining area. The selection is fairly generous; cereal, toast, eggs, bacon, hash browns, sausages, and muffins. Next to the toast, patties of jams, marmalade, butter, honey, and peanut butter sit in neat stacks. Kyle takes bacon and sausages and potatoes, and one slice of toast. If he can help it, Kyle sidesteps kosher rules. He used to abide by them, but these days, it seems to be more trouble than it's worth. He picks up a strawberry jam patty and sighs and wonders if he should bother having faith at all. A few years in South Park is enough to make anyone agnostic.

Stan follows him to a table with a plate of two pieces of toast. Stan avoids meat when it's an option, but he doesn't identify as a vegetarian, and he doesn't go out of his way to avoid eating meat. It helps that he generally doesn't trust meat prepared in a public place. Stan is terrified of food poisoning. Kyle's impressed with how much he's been eating here.

"Hey, bacon," Stan says.

"Fuck kosher," Kyle mumbles. He stabs a sausage and bites the end off.

"Amen, dude," Stan agrees. He butters his toast and then spreads grape jelly on it. Kyle feels a twinge of distain at how sloppy he is with it; he doesn't try at all to cover all the spots, he just kind of throws it on and smears it around. When he takes a bite, he gets a blob of jelly on his mouth.

"You're so messy," he scolds, handing him a napkin. Stan licks the side of his mouth.

"Did I get it?"

"No. Would you just wipe your mouth?" Stan does, and then looks down at the napkin.

"Wow, I'm really bad at eating toast," he says.

Kyle shrugs as if considering the idea. "You're just kind of bad at everything."

Stan frowns. "That made me emotionally insecure."

"I'm not sorry," Kyle clips, finishing the sausage and stabbing another. He looks over Stan and sees that the other four have claimed a table of their own. Wendy sits between Kenny and Butters, but she's across from Craig. He looks back down at his food and hopes Stan just doesn't notice, or, just doesn't make a big deal about it.

Maybe he's in a good mood, or maybe he's just blind, because he neither mentions Wendy's whereabouts nor looks for her. He just eats, fretting about the day quietly.

"Hey, what'cha thinking about?" he asks as they carry their dishes to the dirty dish bucket.

"Oh, I don't know," Stan exhales. "Everything, I guess."

Kyle doesn't pursue it, for sake of keeping him from rambling about his mental state, or accidentally making him fall into one of his blue moods, like the one he seems to have lifted himself out of.

They walk back to the common area, and Stan asks suddenly, "Who do you think they'll call first?"

"I dunno, man. They didn't really have much in the way of order that first time. It kind of seems like they just, you know, draw it from a hat," he says, making hand motions as if pulling a slip of paper out of a hat.

"I hope I'm last," Stan mumbles.

"Me too, dude."

They fall on a couch. Soon enough, Kenny joins them, lying down with his endless legs across their laps.

"Couldn't let you guys cuddle without me," he says cheekily, but Kyle can tell it's a cover, and he can tell that he's nervous.

Stan gets Kenny's knees and Kyle receives Kenny's sneakers. He keeps his hands off of them for a few seconds, and then lets himself start tying knots in them. He makes a clove hitch around his finger, and a series of intricate bows that are really just shoelace bows tied several time over and tucked around some of the other knots. It's kind of stupid, but he thinks that if you look at it the right way, it looks kind of cool, in a way. Kind of Celtic.

It's not as quiet as it was the first time. Butters and Craig sit on the other couch and start some sort of mundane conversation about Bio homework, and Kyle assumes that they're in the same class, or have the same teacher, at least. Wendy and Stan play some sort of quiet thumb war. Kenny lies there, counting dots on the ceiling or something, and Kyle ties knots. He likes this sort of distraction for the tension much, much more than the endless waiting for the intercom to turn on.

But, it does still turn on, despite everyone's best efforts to pretend it's just a normal day, no terrors or treatments. It turns on and it crackles, and then somebody breathes into the microphone, and finally, they say, a little quickly: _"Could Kyle Broflovski please report to the treatment area, Kyle Broflovski, thank you."_

And his stomach just fucking plummets.

_(what)_

He slides out from under Kenny's feet robotically. The fearful eyes of the others bore into the side of his head, hot like lasers. He can't bear to make eye contact.

He starts walking towards the room, that _room _that they couldn't go down to, the forbidden treatment hall. In the back of his mind, he's irked by how fucking high and mighty it sounds.

_(oh I'm the TREATMENT ROOM oh I am so above you)_

"Hey Kyle?" Stan calls. He still can't find it in him to turn around, let alone look at Stan. Stan hesitates, and then continues. "Just in case you die or something," — Kyle's heart stops at the possibility — "I, um, I love you, dude. Please don't get killed."

He wants to just pick Stan up and carry him away from everything, and then maybe just get married in the least homosexual way possible, just pet his hair and buy him Old Spice, and just keep him. He wants to live more desperately than he has ever wanted to live before, even though realistically, the chances of him dying in this thing are very slim. He's still pretty sure it's not going to be anything more than showing him a horse and asking him to pet it. He knows he's being rational, but his body refuses to accept this and his innards are knotting with the anticipation of terror.

"Fuck," he breathes, and it comes out like a sob even though he's not crying. He forces himself to just _go_, just run away and into the hall. No marriages this morning. Maybe tomorrow.

_(if you survive)_

He turns the corner, and the door is a heavy looking metal thing, a grey island in a sea of beige. The knob is cold and dead and it just feels so final, like this is it, that this cool, hard thing to grip is his last tie to this world. He swallows much too loudly and turns it. It's well oiled and turns easily. A small click, and the door gives under his push.

The room he enters is big, big enough to play a decent game of tag or something in. Kyle's shit at estimating height, but the ceiling has to be thirty feet high, give or take some. His footsteps are smothered by the cork flooring underfoot. And yet though the flooring looks expensive, and he's pretty sure the walls are soundproofed, the room is very bare, with its white stucco walls and fluorescent lights stuck to the ceiling. The room might be bigger than what he sees, as the far wall is made up of a heavy velour curtain suspended. It seems to be a shell of something much grander, and all he can think of is that this room is never meant to look the same each time you come in.

Dr. Kelly, the tall nurse he saw in the dining room that day, and Victoria stand some feet in front of him. In her hands, Victoria holds the reins of a tall dapple grey horse. Its eyes are large and black and liquid, its body rotund and powerful. It just exhumes gentility and dignity, enough to make him feel like bowing is in order.

"Good morning, Kyle," Kelly says. "As you are of course aware, we're going to be testing the severity of your hippophobia today. We're going to do two simple tests, and then you can leave. Sound good?"

Kyle can't find the part of his brain that makes words. He says, "Uh," and keeps his eyes on the horse.

Kyle hasn't been this close to a horse in a long time. The first thing he thinks is how it's stupid that he's scared of it, this gentle, soft-eyed equine. In another universe, he would step forward and run his hands lightly down its neck. He read once that horses like having their necks patted.

But this is not that universe. In this universe, his throat is tightening up, and all he wants to do is run far away and run faster than he's ever ran before. This is not a noble or elegant animal; this is a monster in a smooth-haired suit. The tall and strong legs that the monster showcases shattered his femur to the point the doctors had to stick a rod into it. This beast put him into crutches and physiotherapy for three excruciating months, and then a cane for another month after. As if to add insult to injury, the break left him with occasional aching pain in his thigh painful enough to keep him swearing under his breath as waves of dull hurt wash over it again and again.

And because of what? He was trying to feed it hay, for fuck's sake. He was trying to be nice, be a good little ten-year-old kid.

_(monster in a smooth-haired suit)_

_(hey that was kind of poetic hey)_

Kelly snaps him out of his daydream by saying, "Kyle, this is Indy, Victoria's horse. Indy is fourteen years old. She's a very kind, docile girl. Would you please come say hello?"

"No! No thank you," Kyle says shakily, backing towards the door. His whole mouth has gone dry. His leg aches. His knees feel like they might fall off and roll away, and leave him stranded here with two disembodied legs and two useless thighs.

_(get out while you can)_

"Please, Kyle. Come and pet Indy."

"I said no fucking thanks!" Kyle says, voice on the edge of a shriek.

Indy's ears flatten at the tone of Kyle's voice. Victoria scratches her back and mumbles nice things to her, and soon her ears flip up again.

_(look she's scared too)_

"Kyle," he says, and his voice is businesslike but sympathetic, "Come as close as you can to Indy."

He freezes, and his mind goes into lockdown. There are so many fucking things that could just go wrong right now, dozens more than the one thing that could go right: Kyle could approach Indy, give her a pat on the side, and leave calmly.

_(might as well wish for a million dollars while you're at it)_

He takes one small, miniscule shuffle-step forward, and for the first second it all goes well, and then all he can think of is a stampede of horse charging towards him and trampling his bones into dust, leaving him a bloody, mangled mess. He can feel every hoof, every bone splitting down the middle.

_(fuck)_

"No!" he cries, hopping back a step. His hands fly to his leg, and he covers the place where the break once was protectively. "I'm not doing it, okay? Let me go!"

Dr. Kelly murmurs something to the tall nurse, who scribbles something down on a clipboard. They're always with those fucking clipboards.

"More severe than I thought. We're going to drop the second test for now. Thank you, Kyle," Dr. Kelly says. "You may leave."

Kyle says nothing, but wrenches the door open and slams it behind him. The stopping mechanism keeps the door from actually slamming; mostly, he just kind of pulls it aggressively. When it quietly clicks behind him, he leans against the wall in front of him and puts his arms up over where his head would hit the wall. He buries his eyes and doesn't cry, but shudders and wobbles and aches all fucking over. His throat feels like somebody has pushed the whole world into it. It's hard to swallow. Breathing hurts. When he lifts his hands, they're shaking like an earthquake. His whole body feels like an earthquake. His knees shake in time to his fingers.

He doesn't so much recover rather than stop panicking. The state he approaches the rest of his friends in is much like the state he was in when he left the room minus most of the shaking.

"Hey, you're back already? Alive? Was it horrible?" Stan asks, obviously quite taken aback that he's still breathing at all. He gets a closer look at his clenched jaw and pale skin, and says "Oh, shit."

Everyone else is looking by now. They don't look concerned; they just look terrified. Wendy gets up from the other couch and walks over, her face a blend of uncertain emotions all bubbling over the edge.

"Jesus, Kyle, what'd they do?" Kenny asks, sitting up. He doesn't pet his hair or touch his arm. Kenny knows how Kyle works.

"T-there was a fuck- a fucking _horse_ n-named Indy," Kyle says, and he hates himself for the stutter, he hates Indy, he hates that swear he threw in there. He feels like he's full of terror and hate, and all that ever was of kind feelings and honey love is dripping out through the bottom of his soul. "They told me to pet it, and— and I fucking c-couldn't, I just couldn't—" His head falls into his hands, and he feels like he's on the verge of crying, and yet somehow, he stifles it. Kyle has never been a crier.

"Dude, it's okay. Cry; it's cleansing," Stan says, and he pulls Kyle into his arms and hugs him tight, which is awkward, to say the least, as Kyle is at least three or four inches taller than Stan and a hell of a lot bonier. Kyle pushes his face into Stan's shoulder (this requires him to hunch his back somewhat awkwardly) and he gives up, letting himself tremble into tears. Nobody else says anything, or at least he doesn't hear them. He hears Stan's soft words and calming nothings, and his feels Stan's chin on the top of his head. He'd like to just stay in this sanctuary of a sports hoodie and the arms inside it, and he thinks maybe if the world ended right now, in his Stan's arms, he might be okay just like this.

Eventually, Stan's arms loosen, and Kyle resurfaces. Most of them look somewhat aghast, as if they thought it might be that Kyle is incapable of showing more than ten seconds' worth of emotion. He supposes it must have been a whole minute he spent sobbing. He swabs his eyes and says, "I'm better now, okay."

"What'd they _do?_" Wendy says, eyes wide. She's sat down between Kenny and Stan some time while he was crying.

"Nothing, really. They had this horse and they told me to pet it. I tried, and I couldn't, so they sent me out," he says. His throat hurts from crying.

"Are you sure that was all?"

He looks off to the side and then shrugs. "Yeah. That was all."

He pauses, and then says, "The room was weird. I'm pretty sure it was all soundproofed. They had some walls up, the kind on wheels, the kind they use in art galleries when they need to display more pictures than they have wall space for. They cut the area in half, but I think the space was bigger, like maybe the size of a theater or a gymnasium. The ceilings were really high, too."

"Like a room that is meant to change," Wendy breathes.

"Exactly! That's exactly what I thought!" he says, nodding rapidly. "I think it'll look different for the rest of you."

"Then all we can do is wait for the next person to be called down," she says, leaning back. Stan leans back with her and they tangle hands.

"Who was there?" Kenny asks.

"Dr. Kelly, Victoria, because it was her horse," he says, "and that one really tall male nurse. I dunno if you've seen him around. I think he's maybe in training or something, he's always aiding Kelly when I see him."

"His name is Dan. I met him once, when I was walking back from therapy. He was carrying a bunch of papers," Wendy says.

"How many are there, Jesus Christ," Craig groans, tipping his head back.

"You mean staff? Not including kitchen and housekeeping staff? Oh, I don't know. Maybe seven or eight," she says glumly.

"God," Kyle says.

After a small bit of silence, Kenny gets up and puts on a Pixar movie, one of the ones they've all seen. It's just something the fill the air. Kyle has never much liked _The Incredibles_, but there are a few scenes he finds charming. They watch the majority of the movie, and when Syndrome's robot is let go to destroy the city, the next announcement slices through the air.

"_Could Stan Marsh please report to the treatment area, Stan Marsh, thank you."_

Stan twitches, looking like a shock has been sent through his body, toes to temples. Kyle glances at him and sees how he's been frozen into his seat.

"Go," he says simply.

Stan winces, and he mutters _fuck_ under his breath. He whips his head to Kenny, who smiles sadly, and then to Wendy, who squeezes his arm. She tells him to go, just like Kyle, but she sticks a little love name on the end of it, sweetheart or darling or one of those names they always toss around. Stan gets up, but he seems stuck, like he's left his brain behind and his body is functioning on autopilot.

"Stan, just go," Kyle says.

Stan blinks twice like his brain has just landed in his skull. "I can't. I'm going to run away and never come back ever," he says, and his voice is all panic.

"I'll take you," Wendy says, getting up and taking his hands. "Let's go, Stan."

"I can't, Wendy. I can't I can't I can't I can't-"

"You can," she says, pulling him down towards the hall.

"You don't even know, Wendy, I physically, actually, can't do this. This is- this is fucking torture, Wendy, I don't want to be here, I don't want to see a snake or throw up or anything, I want to go home and I want to never, ever, ever come back, and," he babbles as she pulls him around the corner. She drags him up to that heavy door and puts a finger on his lips.

"Stan," she says, looking him in the eye. "You can do this. Don't be afraid."

He halts and looks right at her. He's sure he's hurting her hand from how hard he's squeezing, but he feels vulnerable, and she's safety, his lighthouse in a raging ocean. He wraps his arms around her like she's the last living being in a world that's falling apart.

"God, Wendy, I love you so much," he says, forcing as much meaning as he can into those words. "You're the world to me."

She opens her mouth like she's going to say something, but it doesn't come out, and instead she kisses his cheek and squeezes him lightly. He pulls away and kisses her, desperate and fiery, on the mouth, the way they almost never kiss. Both are content with soft pecks and long hugs. This kind of sudden affection is a kind of territory neither treads on often. She moves her arms around his neck and kisses him back, melting into his being like she does when they kiss. God, he loves every inch of her.

They break apart finally, and she pushes the hair out of his face.

"Don't be afraid," she says again, and he pecks her on the lips lightly.

"I won't be," he promises, hovering near her face. He noses her cheek and leans into her until she lets him go. She does eventually, sending him one last loving smile before turning the corner and disappearing. A sigh slips out of his lips as he turns and looks at the door in front of him labelled _Treatment Area_. Under these bold letters in a smaller font is _Authorized Personnel Only._ Nice greeting.

The room he walks into isn't much like how Kyle described it. The ceiling is low, maybe eight feet, but the room looks small. A small space has been boxed off, maybe the size of his bathroom at home. The walls to his right and left are temporary walls that kiss the ceiling and match the nondescript beige of the room. Dr. Kelly, the tall nurse — Dan, he supposes he should call him, now that he knows his name — and Victoria are there, standing two or three yards in front of him. The separation behind them that completes the small space looks like a curtain, one of the heavy, velour sorts that theatre houses have.

"Hello, Stan. Nice of your girlfriend to send you off," Kelly says with a genuine little smile. Stan bristles at the thought that some aging man watched him through a little camera and said, "Oh, they're such a _nice_ couple," while he broke down in front of Wendy, and not because he was driven to tell her he loved her at that second, but because he thought he actually might not see her again. It's dumb, he knows that. He knows Kyle was only asked — not even forced, for god's sake — to pet a horse, and that no harm was dealt, but he panicked and said his goodbyes.

_(because you know just in case)_

It's not even worth telling them what unbearable assholes they are, because what will they do? Apologize and call his parents so he can go home, maybe give him a hug and give him a juice box, apologize some more?

He mutters, "Weak, man," under his breath.

"I'm sorry to say this, Stan, but your initial treatment may take longer just because we're testing against three established phobia as opposed to just one. You'll get out alive, though," he says with a jovial wink, and Stan hates how Kelly knows he's playing up another fear of his like it's a little joke.

"Okay," he says evenly, though his insides aren't even at all.

"We'd like to start off with nosocomephobia, the hospital aspect, if you would," Kelly says.

"Sure, whatever," Stan says, and in his head he adds _it's all just as awful_.

"Lovely. Step through the curtain and we'll begin," he says, gesturing to the curtain. "There's an opening here."

"Thanks," Stan grunts, and pushes the fabric to the side at the divide Kelly pointed out to him. He feels like Alice and her tumble down the hole that led to a place so far away.

The world on the other side of the curtain is white and sterilized, long and narrow. The floor is the only thing that isn't white and perfect, a distraction in its hardwood appearance. There are beds on the sides of the room, just far enough apart to create a skinny little passage to walk through. Each bed has a person in it. Some are sleeping, some are reading books. Some are trying their hardest to just keep breathing. Some are hooked up to machines that breathe for them.

One bed, the one at the very end of the room, on the left, has a lump covered by a sheet. A heart monitor next to it flatlines.

Stan can feel his stomach creeping up his throat. The nausea he always gets when he's in hospitals is knocking on the door, quietly, a little rap-rap just to tell him it's there. There's an element of discomfort that floats in the room. The whole place is too clean. And despite his awful feelings, despite the fear that runs its fingernails down his lungs, he walks over to the covered bed. A sheaf of medical and important-looking papers lies on the table next to her. He picks them up and flips through them. Most of the many paragraphs are full of abbreviations, for what he cannot guess. Chemotherapy is mentioned. Cancer is mentioned. Stool consistency is plotted on an elaborate graph. The name Darlene Foster is written next to boxes that ask for the name of the patient.

He places it back and it really hits him that he has no place here. This shivering boy has no place among chemo and cancer, no place in a hospital. He should go home. Plenty of people go through their whole lives with things that they can't face, and why is he so goddamned special that he needs to be treated? These are people that need to be treated; _this_ is a boy that needs to wake up and smell the coffee, realize that some people have it a whole lot worse than a moderate fear of snakes and vomit and hospitals.

Darlene Foster doesn't move. He can't stop looking at her, waiting for her to sit up and bend the perfect, ironed bedding. His hand drifts down to the upper corner of her bed. The notion that a horrid monster is waiting under there to jump up and scream in his face won't leave his mind. The nerves and muscles that control his arm, his fingers, retract and he pulls the sheet to the side.

The body of a withered old lady lies still. Her face is wrinkled like crumpled linen, and her skin is pale, like she hasn't been able to see sunlight for centuries. He pulls back the cover some more out of a morbid interest that he can't describe and sees that under her flimsy hospital gown, she has a breast missing. Scared and yet somehow satisfied, he lays the sheet back over her.

"That's my nana," a voice behind him rasps. He whips around and there's a boy sitting upright on a bed. There's a think bandage around his neck with a scratch of blood seeping through. Stan opens his mouth to speak only to find his vocal cords have turned to stone.

"She died about ten minutes ago," the boy wheezes, his cold eyes holding a steady bond with Stan's shivering ones. "They haven't rolled her out yet. I don't think they've noticed."

"Aren't you scared?" Stan breathes.

"No," he says, looking down and picking a cuticle. "I've seen so many people die. She's just another fallen leaf."

"Why are you here?" He doesn't know why he says it. The only part of his mind that isn't urging _run run run run _is saying, _hey, I wonder what this kid is doing here, let's find out._

"They brought us here."

"I meant why are you hospitalized." Why is he pursuing this? He should have taken the misunderstanding as a sign that he has no business asking.

"I had an operation on my neck," he says in his struggling whisper. "Do you want to see?"

_(no)_

The boy reaches up to his bandages and unwraps them. With every layer that he strips, the blood stain gets bigger and bigger, angrier and brighter. The nausea that contracts in his stomach grows strong and he grows increasingly faint.

"Stop," Stan gasps.

He pulls off the last bandage, nearly soaked through with blood. Stan doesn't wait around to see what it looks like underneath. He shrieks and tears to the end of the shiny room. Another heavy curtain separates the beds, the white floors, the glimmering equipment, from the rest of the treatment room. He only finds the divide in the wall of fabric by running into the curtains and waiting for them to fall away behind him. His heart beats so fast it feels like it might pump out of his ribs.

_(like a bird in a cage just trying to fly far away)_

Dr. Kelly and Victoria and Dan are standing on the other side, and Stan assumes they made a passage around the hospital setup they created. The section they stand in now is small and entirely separated by temporary walls, except for a small opening in the far right corner. It's bare save for the four of them, a table with a glass case and a heat lamp on it, and a bowl of- what is that? Some sort of dough?

"Well done, Stan! You did much better in there than we expected. It's a fairly light phobia, isn't it?"

"Yes, I've said that before," Stan pants. His knees are weak and his throat is lurching.

Kelly pauses and then asks, "Do you need a moment?"

Stan nods and smoothes his hair back. His hand drifts to his wrist and he starts massaging it, hoping for nausea relief by pressure. For a second, he almost feels thankful to Dr. Kelly for letting him rest, but he remembers what he saw. Dead people. Dying people. People who are going to be trapped in the inertia of _this may be my last day_ until that day comes. He's not really thinking straight right now — he feels like he's swaying left to right and everything's a little foggy — but he's thinking straight enough to connect those people to Kelly, who must have brought them here, and with that connection, a million new questions float up. Where are these people from? Did they agree to be part of this? What's going to happen to them now?

"You brought these sick people in here just for me to look at?" he accuses. "You took them from their families to be stared at by me? You sick fuck! There's a lady _dead_ in there, you _sick fuck_!"

Kelly's eyes twitch. "Stan," he begins. "We're a licensed treatment center for emotional trauma, mental disabilities, and substance rehabilitation. Do you think we're capable of the actions you just accused us with?"

"Then explain—"

"Stan," he says firmly.

This is where the conversation is supposed to end, but images are running around his mind and he can't make them go away.

_(the blood seeping through his neck god it looked so poorly looked after)_

_(her wrinkled crinkled corpse flatlining and just left there nobody has noticed)_

_(what about all those other people?)_

"You sick fucks," he mumbles. Nothing makes sense; even if there was a proper explanation, he's in no shape to comprehend it. His head is aching and his stomach is reeling with nausea intense enough to make him want to just curl up on the ground. Stan. He's good at controlling it his nausea and as a result hasn't thrown up in several years, but damned if it doesn't make him just feel like shit. He keeps squeezing his wrist like he does when he feels sick and glares at the ground.

Kelly glances at the nurses at his side. They glance back, Victoria's thin brows shrugging quickly.

"Are you ready?" she asks. She doesn't have a very nice voice, he thinks; a little nasal, a little deeper than he likes in a woman, a little chillier than he likes. But when he looks at Victoria, her stick legs and her lined face, he thinks that she didn't have a fairytale life. She looks like the kind of woman that could tell you a thing or two about trauma.

"Yeah, I guess," he says. The fear is still trembling in his kneecaps, and the sickness is still stirring his gut, but he might as well say yes. It's not like it'll get better.

"Good. We're going to test against ophidiophobia now, alright? It won't be bad. In that case over there," she points to the glass box sitting on the table, "is a corn snake. It belongs to one of the therapists here. Do you know Joseph?" Stan shakes his head. "I guess he works with somebody else. Anyway, the snake's name is Ella. She's very nice, very docile. Corn snakes aren't poisonous in the least; they make very nice pets." She looks at him with her pale eyes. "Do you understand? Ella won't hurt you."

Stan wishes to be anywhere but here. Send him to Dubai, ship him to Italy, fly him to Uganda, kick him out into the cold air and thawing ground outside. Send him anywhere but here, where there's a snake he's supposed to touch and hold and accept and god, these people are lunatics.

_(slippery slimy slithery serpents! poisonous petrifying putrid pythons!)_

He wants to say nothing but "I understand" slips out instead. Victoria nods and says, "Would you like me to bring her to you or do want to come to her?"

"I don't think I can move," he whispers.

"I understand," she says. Dan marks something down on his clipboard, nods at Victoria, and she nods back. Then, she approaches the cage, opens the top, reaches in and pulls out a cream-coloured, smallish snake. It hangs quite passively on her hands, but a lot of awful things look benign before you look to close.

_(this is not okay communicate this! tell them this is not okay!)_

She turns to brings it over to him and he says, "I'm sorry. I can't. I can't do this," and he sounds quite alright, but inside it's red alert and his heartbeat has picked up significantly in the past seconds, and he's sure if she doesn't get rid of the reptile right now he's going to faint.

"I'd like you to try," Kelly says.

"Fuck you, you sick fuck," Stan snaps. He hasn't forgotten the bloody bandage and the chemo papers. Kelly doesn't even blink.

"Stan, please try to touch Ella," he says.

"Why should I? The world won't end," Stan says, and his hands ball into fists nervously. Stan has never been a fighter. He's not about to renounce that fact, but he doesn't know what to do. They're threatening him. They're hurting him inside.

"Please try. I haven't seen you try yet," Kelly says once again.

He doesn't even consider it. Ella has picked up her head and is looking curiously _(menacingly)_ at Stan. Her eyes are empty and glossy, but snakes are smart. She's got some fangs stored up in there, and the second he reaches for her, she's going to flip them out and bite through his hand. But he's not falling for it.

He leaps back to try and run away, but he's barely started going before a strong pair of arms wrap around his chest and pulled him back. In the background, something clatters to the ground. He blinks and looks over his shoulder, and Dan the tall nurse has him caught. His clipboard is upside down on the floor.

_(so that's why he's here)_

"Running away isn't the way to face your fears, Stan. Please, one more time, try to step forward to Ella. She's okay. See?" He reaches over to Ella and strokes her head. She doesn't react, just hovering there like none of this has anything to do with her.

Dan turns Stan around and holds his shoulders while he faces him towards Victoria and Ella. Stan makes eye contact with Ella. She doesn't give one fuck.

_(maybe you can pretend you don't give one fuck?)_

He reaches a hand towards her. He's trembling, he can see his fingers wobbling, the sirens in his head are still screaming, but he keeps going. The two feet or so between them feels like two miles, the six seconds it takes feels like six years. And finally,

_(touchdown)_

His fingers meet the top of her smooth head. She's not slimy. She's not slippery. She's just cool to his fingertips and lightly textured with the etchings of her scales. She doesn't move while he roams the space between her eyes. Then, she twitches and moves her head up, and Stan yelps and jumps back, but he doesn't get far with Dan's hands bolted to his shoulders. He did something right. He touched a snake. He's immensely proud of himself inside and he's also immensely terrified, because _he touched a snake_ and that's only the scariest thing he's ever done in his life except for maybe puking up blood.

Kelly starts clapping. "Fantastic, Stan! Do you realize what a tremendous step you've made?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty damned-"

He's cut off by his breath. It starts coming much too fast, much too much, but he can't seem to stop gasping for it. He's aware that he's making sad little animal noises, whimpers and whines, but the pounding in his head is saying

_(too much air! too much too much breath out! breath out!)_

"He's hyperventilating," Dan says.

"I thought he would. I'd be quite impressed if that sort of action against a phobia went without a panic attack. Sit him on the floor," Kelly replies, and Dan does. Stan feels himself sinking to the ground. Dan lets go of him and crouches in front of him, his towering height collapsing to a modest, comfortable size.

"You're hyperventilating, Stan. You're taking in too much oxygen. I need you to breathe out. Just breathe out. Focus on exhaling," he says, and Stan nods shakily, head bobbing erratically. He exhales unsteadily, interrupted frequently by desperate attempts to inhale more. It takes him a minute or two before he can breathe normally. His brain swims, lightheaded.

"How do feel?" Dan asks gently.

"Kinda dizzy," Stan says, dropping his head forward.

"That's to be expected. Your body took in more oxygen than it needed." Dan stands up and walks to pick up his clipboard.

Stan takes a few seconds to mentally recover. He hugs his knees and rests his head on them. Hyperventilating is nothing new to Stan; it doesn't happen often, but often enough that he knows what to expect, and often enough that he resents Dan talking to him like he's a child who doesn't know shit. He waits until the dizziness fades, and then he stands up.

"Can I go now?" he says.

Kelly cracks a smile. "I'm sorry, Stan. We still have to test against emetophobia, your fear of vomit. This should just be a quick test, though. You can go right after we're done."

_(fuckin three phobias the others are so goddamned lucky)_

"Fine," he grumbles. "Let's get this shit over with." Despite his tone, Stan's actually rather impressed with himself for touching Ella. There's a bubble of optimism in his stomach, and it makes him feel lighter.

Kelly goes over to the table where Ella's case is. Sometime while he was recovering, Victoria must have put Ella back, because Kelly makes a cooing noise into the case. He grabs the bowl that Stan noticed earlier and comes back over. He pulls a layer of saran wrap off. Inside is what looks like cookie dough. Kelly dips his finger in and licks it off. Then, he offers it to Stan.

"Care for some?"

_(that shit's not even baked you madman)_

_(how long's that been sitting there?)_

"No thanks," Stan says.

"Not even a bit? It's sugar cookie dough. The cooks made it this morning," Kelly says.

"Not even a bit, thank you." Stan's better with this phobia because he deals with it on the most regular basis. While he goes into a hospital maybe twice a year at the worst of times and thinks about snakes only when he's in an environment where they may be present, he's constantly offered food that may be contaminated, and he's constantly in situations where he has to consider food poisoning in the efforts of avoiding the possibility of vomiting. Stan doesn't have a problem with rejecting food. It's being forced to eat it that bothers him.

Kelly looks at the bowl in his hands and then back at Stan. He smiles and says, "Thank you, that's all. You can leave through this exit here so you don't have to go through the hospital wing again." He nods and steps through a small opening between the walls and walks into a corridor, a different one than mock hospital wing he came from. He's feeling okay, really; a little wobbly, a little shaky, but besides that, he can comfortably say he feeling fine.

The hall he walks down has nothing interesting in it. One side is temporary wall; the other is the actual solid wall of the treatment room. He can tell the temporary walls from the real walls because at the bottom, he can see very small stubs of feet. They lift the wall up maybe a few inches off the floor, enabling them to be moved somehow. Stan thumps one. Surprisingly, it doesn't sound solid. Not exactly hollow, but somehow — not solid. He doesn't know how to put it. Even so, it must be monstrously heavy.

At the exit, that big heavy door, he hesitates. What are they doing in the hospital setup? Are they dismantling it now? Surely they must be. It's not like they have so much time that they can just idly move everything back when they feel like it.

He steps towards the curtain and pulls it aside. He wishes he hadn't.

There are several nurses huddled around a certain bed. They're talking in fast, serious voices and running around, grabbing equipment. When there's a clearing, he can see an older man shaking and convulsing on the bed. He jerks particularly violently and a glob of vomit escapes his mouth. It dribbles down his cheek, and shortly after, a sizable portion bubbles out. A nurse blocks Stan's view and starts taking action, but the damage is done. He saw it.

There's a noise boiling in his chest, threatening to come out like a scream, but he claps his hands over his mouth and allows his legs to go weak under him. He falls to the ground hard on his hip, and though the pain is a distraction from the fear, it's not enough to cancel it out, and he's got to distract himself or get out of here before the noise comes out and he lets them know he saw everything.

_(hell they're probably watching you anyway)_

He doesn't feel faint; rather, he feels incredibly alert, by adrenaline, naturally. But he feels like he's on the edge of another panic attack, and he really can't afford another one.

_(that sick sick man they have no right to keep him here)_

_(no don't think about that)_

_(he could fucking die and I'll bet they don't even care!)_

_(get outta here)_

Stan stands up and grasps the doorknob. He pulls the door open and throws himself out it, letting it shut by itself.

The harried voices of the nurses disappear with the closing of the door. All there is on the other side is silence with the occasional voice from the common area that only carries well enough to catch a few sounds from. Stan curls up in a corner and hugs his knees again. Stan is a crier. There's never been any denying it. He always goes red when he cries, always so fucking red that he can't deny it, and this is why he tries to resist the tears before they come. And then he thinks he probably looks like a wreck anyway, that there's really no point in pretending he's more than he is. He cries into his jeans as quietly as he can manage. When he picks his head up, his left knee is soaked with tears and mucus. He wipes himself down as best as he can, takes a few breaths, and walks back into the common area.

They've finished _The Incredibles_ and have started _The Hunger Games_. Craig's passively bickering with Butters over the book versus the movie, and Wendy's leaning against Kenny's shoulder while Kyle sits on the other side of the couch. He knows he shouldn't, but he hates it when Wendy and Kenny cuddle like that. It flares something inside him — jealousy, he supposes — that just makes him want to yell at them.

_(I get how fucking awesome you are Kenny you don't have to flaunt it like that)_

_(fucking dick)_

"Hey," Stan says. A couple of them jump, and they all look over to him.

"You were gone longer than me," Kyle says. "Come sit down, dude, you look awful."

"They had to test against three phobias. It took longer," Stan grumbles, taking a seat between Wendy and Kyle. Wendy shifts off Kenny in favour of Stan's shoulder, and that soothes the flicker of jealousy. He really shouldn't bother being mad about it, but god, he can't help it sometimes.

"So what'd they do?" she asks. "I'm happy you're back."

"I'm happy to be back," he says, nosing her hair. She smells good, like that sweet perfume she wears; she always smells like vanilla and jasmine, and her hair always smells like candy, but she says it's supposed to smell like strawberries. He's safe here, between Kyle and Wendy, who'll always be there for him.

"What'd they do?" she asks again, and his nice little bubble of sweet sanctuary is burst by having to remember it all.

He sighs. "Some fucked-up shit, man. So the first thing they tested was my fear of hospitals, right? They send me into this skinny little corridor, and I swear to god there had to be a dozen hospital beds in there, like those flimsy metal ones on wheels. Every bed had a patient in it, and there was this one kid with like, neck surgery? He started talking about his nana, who was sitting the bed across from him, and she'd just died. She had cancer, I saw the forms. And then he started like, unwrapping his bandages and stuff, and there was all this blood and god, I screamed and ran away. I couldn't take it." He rubs his temples and catches his breath before continuing. "Then Kelly got me to touch this snake that belongs to one of the therapists here, some guy named Joseph?"

"He's my therapist," Craig says.

"There you go. Anyway, so I actually touched it, which was super horrible because I've never gotten with six feet of a snake in my life, let alone touched one. Then, he gave me some cookie dough to eat and I said no, because come on. There could be germs and stuff on it. Then he let me go, and when I got to the door I glanced through into the hospital thingy they made and there was like, this guy having a seizure and throwing up everywhere, and I got so scared I just ran the fuck outta there. I kind of hid for a few minutes until I felt okay, and now I'm here."

There's thick silence for a moment while they process the information.

"There was a dead guy in there?" Kenny blurts out.

"Yeah, this old lady. She had breast cancer. I walked over and she was just flatlining."

Kenny slumps back in his seat. "Shit, man, that's somebody's mom. I can't believe they'd actually do something like that."

"It's not like they killed her. She died while she was there," Stan says.

"And what gave them the fucking right to take her away? She shoulda been with her family while she died, not in a fuckin treatment center. Jesus Christ," Kenny says, running a hard tiredly through his hair.

"I asked Kelly about it and he didn't give me an answer," Stan says. "He just told me that they're not allowed to do stuff like that and then they just made me drop it. It's unfair as shit, man, but I don't know what I can do about it."

"That coulda been anyone we know. How would you fuckin feel if some people came and took your dying mother away so they could put her in a cramped little hall so some kid can stare at her? That's not just unfair, it's inhumane."

"Forget it, Kenny. It's done," Craig says from the other couch.

"How can you just dismiss it like that?" Wendy says, glaring at Craig. "This is serious! There's a lady dead because of Stan! No offense, Stan," she adds quickly. "Nobody in the world should be able to do that."

"Wendy, please," Kenny starts, but he's drowned out.

"She's right, man," Kyle throws in. "It's not done, there's a lady dead in there because of us. You can't say that's not serious."

"Serious or not, it's done. You can't go back in time, you can't save the world. You can't save her life."

"You act like they're going to get away with it!" Wendy yells. "They can't fucking get away with keeping all these dying people in one place like that! You can't buy a life away."

"For the right amount of money, you can," he says.

"What do you think you're even talking about?" she groans.

"You really think everything in the world works so goddamn ideally, don't you? Do you know where those people are from? If the families aren't rich, then they're struggling with hospital bills. What if you had the choice of taking out a loan for a hundred thousand or have somebody else pay it, providing they can use the person for scientific research? I'll bet you'd say yes, wouldn't you?"

Kenny sighs and says, "Craig, don't push this."

"That's not the point, Craig. You morally can't buy a life away!"

"So what? They did," he answers, purposefully nonchalant.

Wendy falls face-first for it and goes red, crying, "I can't believe you can be so passive about this! We could do something about it, and you're just signing your life away like it doesn't mean a thing!"

"And what are you gonna _fucking_ do, Wendy? Call the police? They'll say you're not mentally well, and you know what? They'll believe Kelly, because you're a patient in an insane asylum, and he's the doctor. Do you think you can really do anything?" he spits back.

"It's those kinds of words that make nothing happen. What if I can do something? What if I can do something but I never will because _you_ fucking talked me out of it?"

"Who's going to save the world if nobody thinks it's possible?" Kyle throws in. He's flushed and clearly worked up, but it doesn't take much to upset Kyle. Stan looks at Kyle resignedly and slouches back in the couch.

"Nobody's going to save the world because nobody can save the world. There's too much world to save," Craig says. "That's my point, but you two are so fucking thick it just went right over your heads. You think you can save the world by holding a fucking bake sale and making a speech about why we should be good people, don't you? That's what they say, but man," he chuckles humourlessly, "you gotta be pretty damned stupid if you really believe it."

Stan notices that Butters has slinked off to the armchair and is picking his cuticles idly through the mayhem, waiting for it to stop.

"I'm not stupid, Craig! You're the stupid one for just blowing this off. Do you get off on other people's misery or something? Somebody out there lost their mom today, and you're saying 'let it go'? Are you really too self-absorbed to see how serious this is?"

"She was going to die anyway, Kyle. What do you care where she dies?"

"I care because the next person that goes in there has the chance of seeing something like this!"

"Now you're the self-absorbed one. You say you're upset for the family and then you say you're worried for your well being."

"He's worried for _you_, asshole!" Wendy says.

"Would you all just shut the fuck up?" Kenny shouts, getting up and standing between the couches. Kenny's not an intimidating guy for the most part, but when he's standing like this, six foot two and towering over all of them at sitting height, he's nothing to scoff at. In one second, the air of the room has gone from chaos to control. Butters lifts his head to watch.

"I get that you three tolerate each other the best of times, but holy shit, do you have to be so goddamned immature about it? What the hell do you think you're doing, pushing each other like that? We're all we've got, and if you can't get past your petty fucking hang-ups, then what's the point of even trying?"

"Hey, fuck you, Kenny, you're the one that started-"

"Kenny, that's not fair, he was saying that-"

"Don't say you agree with him, you can't-"

"Don't fuck with me! I don't want you three in the same room until you've fucking relaxed. There's no excuse for this. Beat it," Kenny hisses. Craig glares at him, stands up, and relocates himself to one of the tables. He snatches a deck of cards off the table and starts shuffling them moodily. Wendy also gets up, and her lips are firm in a straight little line, but her eyes are glossy with tears of frustration. She storms off to the dining area. Kyle mutters something under his breath and heads to hallway leading to the group therapy room.

Kenny watches them until they've either settled or gone out of sight, then sighs.

"God, I hate doing that." He looks down at Butters, who's smiling from his chair. "Come over here, Butters, I'm sorry for the commotion."

"Not your fault, Kenny. It's real brave of you to take control like that. I'd never be able to," he says, getting out of the chair and walking over. Kenny pulls him into a one-armed hug. He's comparatively short at average height.

"You gonna sit down or what?" Stan says.

"Yeah," Kenny says, and pulls Butters over to the couch. They settle in and stay quiet for what feels like a long time, but really might just be ten or fifteen seconds.

"You know, I'm feeling pretty fine right now. I was expecting that we'd all talk about my feelings and I'd start crying or something, but instead we just had this nice big fight and I'm numb," Stan says. "Not that it was nice to sit through that, it's just nice not be feeling so scared right now."

"No. That thing was shit. I'm glad you're feeling okay, though," Kenny says, patting Stan's head with a heavy hand.

"You know, the movie's been playing this whole time," Butters says.

"Oh, right. Shit, I totally forgot about it. I haven't even seen it yet, if you'll believe that. What have I missed?"

"Not much. You'll catch on," he says.

They watch for fifteen minutes or so (somewhere in here, Stan turns and notices Craig's moved chairs to get a better view of the screen) until Kyle sulks back in to sit on the other couch. Stan wants to go sit with him, but he's way over there, and Stan's still a little disappointed in him for getting so worked up over Craig, whom, they both agreed years ago, is not worth their time. He's joined in another five minutes by Wendy, who looks a little red still. Her eyes are dry, but he can't tell if it's because she cleaned up or if she never cried at all. Craig still stays at his table, and Stan supposes he's either residually pissed off or comfortable.

Then; _"Could Kenny McCormick please come down to the treatment room, Kenny McCormick, thank you."_

Kenny sighs. "I'd hoped it might not be me next."

"They're going alphabetically by last name," Craig says from behind them. Kenny looks over the couch and smirks.

"That's the most useful thing you've said all day."

"Fuck you, Kenny," he says, slumping forward over the table. "It'll be Butters next, then Wendy, then me."

"The more you know," Kenny says with a shrug. He gets up and gives a lazy salute. "Be seeing you, maybe. They're testing against poison, so I might get killed or something. Please sue if I don't return."

"You make this sound funny," Wendy says.

"It's not that funny, really, but pretending it is makes all of this a little easier," he says. "Don't fight while I'm gone."

"I think we can control ourselves," she mutters.

Kenny laughs and turns away. He slips between the couches and past the tables, where he stops to kiss the top of Craig's head and say, "Cheer the fuck up, sunshine. You know I wouldn't beat the shit out of you."

"Don't kiss me," Craig mumbles. "Good luck in there."

"Thanks," Kenny says, continuing past him and down the hallway. He has to admit he feels alright, maybe more alright than he should, but he got to hug Butters and kiss Craig, so to his thinking, even if it goes awfully, he'll have something nice to hold onto.

_(kissing Craig hmm we could do more of that if he's gay)_

His nose wrinkles at the thought, and he tries to banish it as he opens the door. He's a little disappointed when he sees Victoria, Dan, and Kelly standing there in the boxed-off space, but by what Kyle and Stan had said, he's pieced together that this is the group that'll be present for all of them. Kelly of course has to be there because he's the boss, Dan perhaps because he seems to be Kelly's assistant or something, but over the days he's wondered if Victoria might be the head nurse/therapist. She seems to know her shit, and she does deal with all of them, every day, unlike the private therapists, who have much easier jobs by comparison. Victoria seems older than most of the others as well, looking to be maybe in her late forties, but it's hard to tell if she keeps herself younger than she is, or if she's old for her age. She could be thirty-nine; she could be fifty-five.

The three are standing behind a table which has on it six sealed glass beakers. The first beaker is small and has a white powder in it. The second is also small, and has several black berries inside. The third is bigger and has a white mushroom in it. The fourth has a large brown spider inside, standing shock-still. The fifth has a yellow liquid inside. The sixth is not a beaker, actually, but a sealed glass tube with a yellow tint. Beside the table is a box, just a Plain Jane cardboard box. An upside-down this-side-up sticker is peeling in front.

"Hello, Kenny. How are you feeling today?" Kelly asks.

"Gross," Kenny says, eyeing the table. The scrap of happiness he held when he came is has hidden in place for something wary and tentative, pushing on his temples and squeezing his heart. His chest throbs painfully.

"Oh, that's unpleasant. Let's get down to business, shall we?" Kelly says with a nod. Kenny hates how goddamned happy he always seems, how genuinely pleased he always looks. "On this table are six potentially deadly poisons. Can you identity any?"

Kenny's body flushes cold. It's not that he wasn't expecting it, but just to have his thoughts reinforced makes his stomach twist up. At least they're sealed up; he finds them less harmful when they're showcased like this and far from his wandering fingers. Ironically, among all these deadly things in front of him, he's thinking about the glass cleaner that could be on the beakers. Still, he doesn't want to touch them, and doesn't really want to stray from this comfortable distance.

He studies them for a little while.

"The white powder is either arsenic or cyanide. I can't tell. The berries are nightshade. There's a few growing by Stark's Pond, actually. I dunno about the mushroom, it's just kinda big and white, as far as I can tell, but I'm sure it's like instant death. The spider is a brown recluse spider. I see them in the house sometimes." He picks up the beaker of yellow liquid and looks at it, turning it from side to side and catching it in the sunlight. It's not totally clear, but he wouldn't go as far as calling it cloudy. He frowns and looks a little closer, and then he jolts with realization. He puts it back on the table as gently as he can manage with his hands that want nothing more than to jam into his pockets, and says, "That's snake venom, isn't it? Jesus fuck."

"Very good. Now, what about the last?"

"That's fluorine gas. Where the fuck did you get fluorine gas? That shit's regulated, you can't just walk up and buy it."

Kelly picks up the beaker of white powder and says, "Your answers were very close. The white powder is indeed potassium cyanide; very, very lethal. It was the preferred toxin for suicide pills when such was popular. Hitler himself bit into a cyanide capsule while shooting himself." He puts it down and picks up the mushroom. "This is a destroying angel mushroom, very toxic and present through much of the world. As little as half the cap can be fatal if not treated." He places it back down.

"Where the fuck did you get all this? Cyanide, fluorine, even those fucking berries! They're not even in season right now," Kenny demands. He's doing better than he expected, but he supposes his aggravation and confusion is covering the fear up. When he separates his emotions from the physical state of his body, he notices his chest clenching and that he's licking his lips much too much.

"That's not for you to ask about."

"Well, that doesn't fucking matter now, does it? I'm asking," he says.

"Kenny, that's confidential. I'm sorry, but I cannot volunteer any more information," Kelly says stiffly. "If you don't mind, I'd like to continue."

"So it's gonna be like that. Okay, I'm chill. Do what you want," Kenny mutters.

"I'd like you to turn around for a second, if you don't mind," Kelly says, reaching towards the box on the floor beside them. Kenny obliges without comment, and presently hears the clinking of glass.

"You guys drinking without me?" Kenny says, covering his frustration and fear with bland humour.

"Nothing nearly that exciting, I assure you," Kelly says, the smile in his voice audible.

"You saving the Chardonnay for yourselves?" Kenny asks, but he knows he's carried the joke beyond its brief life when they don't reply. "I've never tried Chardonnay. It sounds pretty fancy, though. Is it fancy?"

"Chardonnay is a kind of wine grape, actually, but the wine by the same name can be hit and miss. There's good Chardonnay, there's bad Chardonnay."

"I'm gonna ask for a bottle for my next birthday." Shortly after Kenny says that, he realizes his birthday is incredibly close. "Oh, wait, my birthday's next week. Never mind. I'll ask for some for Christmas."

"Your birthday is coming up?" Victoria asks.

"Yeah. March 22. I'll be seventeen."

"Well. Tell the cooks and they'll make a cake." The glasses clink behind him.

"They will? That'd be super nice," Kenny asks, honestly surprised. He starts wondering what kind he'll ask for.

"You can turn around now," Kelly says, and Kenny's brought from cake musings back to the treatment room. He turns slowly and looks at the table. The six beakers now all have partners. Duplicates, really; inside each is a substance or organism matching the ones he looked at earlier. There are now two spiders, two piles of powder, two yellow puddles, two mushrooms, two piles of berries, two yellow tubes. His innards lurch.

"The next part is a little more difficult. One of the items in each pair is non-toxic. I'd like for you to try and tell me which is poisonous and which is not."

"Are you fucking out of your minds? I'm not going near there," Kenny bites. "I identified them. Okay? I'm done. I'm not doing this."

"I'd like you to try," Kelly says simply.

"I said no, Kelly. Fuck off."

"I don't see you trying."

Kenny glares at Kelly, and he holds steady eye contact back. Kenny is beginning to notice that Kelly isn't a guy that's easily intimidated, but there's probably no room to be intimidated in his job. If he was cowering at every half-baked threat, the success rate coming out of the hospital would be much lower.

Kenny's suddenly seized with the impulse to impress Kelly. If he can't intimidate the guy, he sure as hell can knock him off his feet. What if he nails every single one of these comparisons? Kelly's face would be so fucking _rich_. It would all be worth it.

"Watch me, motherfucker," he says, and walks right up to the counter.

_(what the actual fuck are you doing no!)_

He can feel the warning bells going off, and he's aware that pretty much his whole body is beginning to quake, but he picks up the first two beakers and looks at them closely. One is a grainy white powder, one is smooth.

_(oh this is harder than I thought)_

He shakes them a little bit and sighs. The grainy stuff looks like sugar, but the smooth stuff looks like baking powder. God, he could make a cake.

"Is this baking powder?" he asks, figuring he doesn't have much to lose. He puts the smooth powder on the table, not expecting much. But then Kelly's face breaks into a grin.

"Well done! Cyanide is grainy, like sugar. We were going to use sugar, but we decided it'd be nearly impossible. Very impressive, Kenny!" he says. "Try the berries, now."

A surge of pride goes through Kenny. He picks up the berries and finds them much easier to tell apart.

"These are nightshade. They're bigger. These are elderberries, I think. I mean, I dunno, I've never seen them in real life, but I saw 'em in a movie once and they looked sorta like this," he says, putting them back on the table.

"Exactly. You're doing quite well, Kenny."

"Thank you, I'm a champion," Kenny says. In the mushroom cases, there's one larger one and one smaller one. Kenny recognizes the small one as your average store-bought button mushroom, and receives appropriate applause from Kelly, who explains destroying angels are bigger but often mistaken for edible mushrooms. He moves onto the spiders.

"This one has stripes all over it. A real brown recluse spider is only one colour, like this one," he says, putting down the brown recluse and holding up the imposter. "I don't know my spiders that well. Here." He hands it to Kelly, who gives it to Dan, who's been packing up the beakers Kenny's identified.

"Very good. Incidentally, that's a fishing spider, which is venomous, but only as severe as a bee sting. I wouldn't be scared of these guys," he says.

"Most insects don't scare me. It's the really bad ones — black widows and stuff — that make me uncomfortable, but even so. They're no big deal; I can always squish 'em," Kenny says, picking up the two beakers of yellow liquid. One doesn't have the slightly cloudy quality the other had.

"This is the fake. Snake venom's not this clear."

"Mm hmm. This clear one is apple juice," Kelly says. He takes the beakers and hands them to Dan. "And the gases? Can you tell me which is fluorine?"

Kenny looks at them for a second and decides that one is merely tinted glass, the other being fluorine. He puts them on the table and grins.

"See that, motherfucker? I got every fucking one of those. Every fucking one!" he says.

"Congratulations, Kenny. I'm surprised you were so calm though the test," Kelly said. Victoria scribbles something down on her clipboard.

"I only get scared when there's the chance that I could've come into contact with that stuff, but you guys had it in like, scientific containers and stuff. But goddamn, my heart's racing," he says with a weak laugh. He feels like he's one-upped the doctors by not fainting or throwing up or really being too scared at all. He's too proud of himself for indentifying everything to feel scared or even mad about where they got this shit.

"Well, we're quite impressed. Well done."

"Can I go?" Kenny asks.

"You may. Thank you, Kenny," he says, pushing his glasses up and taking Victoria's clipboard from her. They discuss it in low voices while Kenny leaves.

When the door closes behind him, all he can think of is how badly he needs a smoke. God, he'd do anything right at this second to feel the paper crinkle between his lips while the nicotine hits his lungs. He rubs his temples and plays with his hair until it feels neat. His heart's beating fast, thumping against his chest with every violent flutter. There's an unmistakable panic growing in his chest, though right now there's nothing to be scared of. His whole body feels awkward and shaky, like it just wants something solid to hold onto.

Then he starts singing, just to refocus, just to get his mind off everything. "_Eleanor Rigby_," he sings quietly, "_died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came; Father Mackenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave._" He looks at the metal door in front of him.

"_No one was saved,_" he whispers, finishing the verse.

Maybe it was just a shitty choice of a song, or maybe his emotions were leading up to this, but he suddenly feels very drained, lifeless and hopeless. If there's really a point to all of this, it feels distant and faint, irrelevant, even. He wanders back into the common area and sees they're all still watching _The Hunger Games_, all situated on the couches except for Craig, who's still at the tables, chair pulled over to put his feet on.

Kenny walks over and wraps his arms around Craig's shoulders and neck. Craig glances to the side briefly and says, "I thought I heard you singing."

"I'm feeling shitty and icky," he says. "I'd really love you if you could lend me a cigarette right now."

"You'd love me anyway. I'm saving them," Craig says, and it makes Kenny even more miserable. He noses Craig's hair (which smells like the peppermint shampoo in the bathroom) while the others turn around and notice him there.

"Hey, Kenny, how'd it- oh, are you guys having a moment?" Stan says.

"We're not having anything. I'm really tired," Kenny muffles.

"What'd he say?"

"He's tired," Craig translates.

"That bad, huh?" Stan says sympathetically. "What'd they do?"

"Nothing bad," Kenny says. "I had to indentify some poisons."

"Oh, that's alright, then. Come lie down or come cuddle, or whatever, you know? We're all here for you," he says, smiling softly.

"What was the room like this time, Kenny? Did it change again?" Wendy asks, looking over the couch.

"Average ceiling. Maybe ten feet. Kind of a small space, temporary walls that reached the ceiling, I think. Nothing too supernatural."

Stan looks over and says, "They reached the ceiling? My ceiling couldn't have been ten feet, and they reached the ceiling for me too."

"It's a mystery for another time, Stanny boy."

Stan shrugs and looks back to the screen (Kenny can hear him reporting, "Kenny's back" to Kyle).

"They had all this shit and I don't know where they got it. Cyanide. Fluorine gas. Snake venom. It wasn't the tests themselves that bugged me — they went fine — but just where do they get that shit? It doesn't make sense," Kenny mumbles.

"What'd he say?"

"Nothing," Craig says.

Kenny ducks his head down to the crook of Craig's neck and whispers, "Is this a moment?"

"No," Craig says. "You need to go lie down. You get weird and affectionate when you're tired."

"And you know this as a fact?" Kenny says.

"Yeah, you always want to cuddle when we do movie marathons. I can always tell when you're tired when you start doing this," Craig says, standing up and slipping out of Kenny's grasp. "Come on, let's move you."

"Are you guys flirting?" Kyle calls.

"We're planning our wedding," Craig deadpans, and it earns a snigger from Kyle.

Craig shoos Butters off the couch to the chair to make room for Kenny to lie down. Butters makes a face, but gets up anyway. He changes the angle of the chair for a better view and settles in while Kenny lies down. Craig moves his feet and sits on the far end.

"So far away?" Kenny pouts.

"Mm. Watch the movie."

"Cold," he mutters, looking towards the screen. The heroine onscreen is running from some new danger. Kenny's decided that he's not such a fan, generally preferring high-speed action movies, car chases and machine guns and whatnot. He's not the kind that likes to notice all the little details in a movie. He just likes to see, be entertained, and not think about it afterwards.

He must have dozed off at some point, because when he notices the screen next, some sort of romantic thing is going on onscreen between the heroine and a character he doesn't recognize. Craig hasn't moved, though. He's making some sort of clicking sound with his retainer, watching the movie but clearly not wholly enthralled. Butters is picking his cuticles again in between watching. He's sitting sideways in the chair, legs draped over the arm, shoes hanging half-on, half-off. On the other couch, Stan watches the movie blank-faced, shoes on the floor and feet tucked under his legs. Kyle drums his fingers against the couch cushion and watches with waning interest. Wendy braids her hair and rakes it loose again, braid and undo, braid and undo.

Kenny looks down the couch and focuses on Craig, waiting for him to notice the eyes on him. It takes a minute, but Craig eventually meets his gaze. Kenny smiles at him and receives an almost-smile. If he was anyone else, his lips would move, but instead a smile flashes in his eyes and no more.

His throat twists closed as he reflects that he truly thinks Craig's really pretty. He loves working a real smile of him, but god, those eye-smiles kill him.

"_Could Butters Stotch please report to the treatment room, Butters Stotch, thank you."_

"Good call, Craig," Butters says from the chair. He sucks on a bleeding finger he's picked at too aggressively.

"Told you it was alphabetical," Craig replies.

There's this look that Butters adopts sometimes that unnerves everyone who notices; his face just blanks. There's nothing more to say about it. His eyes go dull and his lips are flat, and you can look at that face for years and not know any more about what's going on underneath than the first time you saw it.

"It's really not so bad-" Stan starts, but then he frowns and closes his mouth. He pauses and rephrases. "It's bad, but you'll be okay. They can't hurt you, physically."

"Gee, I feel much better now, Stan," Butters mumbles, standing up. Stan starts to apologize, but Butters waves him down.

"Hey, you want an escort?" Kenny says.

"No," Butters says. "Thanks, though."

"Good luck, Butters," Wendy says. "I hope it all goes okay."

He smiles wanly and says, "Me too, Wendy." He's holding by a thread not to spill out a pile of messy emotions, fear and worry and concern all eating him toes-up, but if he keeps his eyes level and his lips shut, they seem to remain at bay.

He can feels eyes on his back even as he turns the corner, like they don't trust him not to break down. This fragility has haunted him his whole life, from his stupid never-ending trust and store of second chances to the way he's never really learned how to hold back his tears. Even the way he talks and thinks makes people think they have to baby him, and though he admits he likes the attention, he just wants-

_(just want somebody to see me as the strong one for once)_

But there's nothing to make anyone think that. He's never shouldered anyone's problems. He's never stood up for anyone, let alone really stood up for himself. He's never done anything that makes somebody look at him and say, "That kid could be a superhero someday."

_(is is selfish to still want it?) _

He opens the door and finds a tall room, boxed off into a small room about the size of his bedroom. He looks up and marvels at how this room could be the curtained, claustrophobic room of Stan's description and the airy, bare room of Kyle's. There must be some mechanism in the roof that lowers and raises this ceiling. He doubts it's real; more likely, it's a lighter, flimsier thing easily raised or lowered. Even so, it'd be interesting to see how it really works.

"Hello, Butters. How are you feeling?" Kelly asks. Butters looks over and freezes. Dan and Victoria are bouncing a yellow balloon back and forth, like little kids looking for cheap entertainment. Dan taps it off his fingertip and it floats carelessly to Victoria, who pokes it back. It's a game, just a childish game of don't-let-it-touch-the-ground. He used to play those games, once upon a time.

"I've been better," Butters says, eyes following the balloon like it's a snake preparing to strike.

"Haven't we all. So, you are of course aware that this is an exercise testing against globophobia. We're going to be doing two little tests. For the first, I'd like to ask you to simply bounce the balloon back when Dan sends it to you, alright?" He speaks like a newly-poured road; nice and smooth, no bumps, no cracks.

"I- I don't know, Doctor," he replies.

Dan catches the balloon in his hands and says, "Ready?" The way it's tilted in his hands makes Butters notice that there's some writing on it: _Happy Birthday!_

"Happy birthday," he breathes, pulse quickening.

"Hmm?" Dan says. He looks at the blue balloon between his palms and says, "Oh, yeah. These were the only ones in the back room. Sorry about that."

_(sorry about that he says)_

_(the party the birthday party)_

The gates burst and he stutters out, "I was at- I was at a birthday p-party when it came a-about." The words are strange on his tongue. They fit like squares trying to fit into triangles, corners bumping and grinding.

Kelly looks him in the eye. "When your phobia came about?"

"Yeah," he says. "Th-there was this man- this man with a g- he had a g-" His brow explodes into a cold sheen of sweat, and he starts shivering. He tries to push on with his sharp-edged, awkward letters, haphazardly smashed into words. "He was j-just a guy helping out with the p-party, but he wasn't, he had this g-g-_gun_," he spits, the word leaving a hollow taste in his mouth, "and he pointed to this little boy like he was a t-target on a sh-shooting range, like he was m-meat, like he was . . ." There are spots flitting through his vision. He can't hold on much longer, but he wants to expel the rest of the story before he goes out. "I saw it all, saw- saw _everything_."

_(there you go sugar you got it out)_

_(Victoria's voice all like he's gonna faint Dan grab him)_

_(Dan's like I got him)_

_(it's coming back)_

_(never tried to deny it)_

_(never tried to embrace it . . .)_

_He's in his favourite shirt, the blue one with a big Tyrannosaur Rex, and his little six-year-old fingers are wrapped tight around a present bound in smiley-face wrapping. His parents pull up to Jamie's house, all pretty brick and manicured lawns. Butters has known Jamie ever since he can remember. Jamie's parents and his parents were friends through university, where his mother received her English degree and his father scaled his Sociology degree. The links between them run deep._

_Can I ring the doorbell? Butters asks._

_You may, but only press it once, Linda Stotch says._

_Butters grins and reaches up to the doorbell, smashes his fist against it. There's a _bing bong_ inside and the scrambling of little feet and tiny voices. The door cracks open and it's Jamie, curly brown hair and pug-nose. He's got smudged face-paint on his cheeks, drawn in what might have been a tiger's face at one point but now is a streak of black and orange. A few similarly decorated faces peer over Jamie's shoulders. There are appropriate greetings and introductions around, and Jamie tells Butters where to put the gift so he can come downstairs and join in with the games. He drops it on the table and dashes to join the party while his parents settle in and talk about whatever parents talk about._

_The basement — the party's main base — is decorated extravagantly with streamers, banners, and more balloons than Butters has ever seen. You could bury somebody in all the balloons. There are some helium ones on shiny ribbons tied to the furniture, some more stuck on the ceiling, even more lying around the floor. Chips and other snacks are on the coffee table. There's also a guy doing face-painting, sharing space with the snacks, his paints set up in between the bowls of ketchup and barbeque chips. He sits on a low stool and draws a butterfly on a girl's cheek._

_Who's he? Butters asks, taking a chip out of a bowl._

_He's Brandie's uncle, Jamie replies, pointing to a girl across the room. He dropped Brandie off and turns out he decided to stay and help. He's really good at painting._

_Butters nods, having received all the information he wanted to know, and he picks a balloon off the ground._

_Don't let it touch the ground! he shouts, and a couple other kids throw balloons in the air as well. Within seconds, seven or eight balloons are being hit back and forth feverishly, all the partygoers trying hard not to let them touch the forbidden carpet flooring. It's a frenzy of balloons and red and blue and yellow, and yet through the chaos Brandie's uncle sits nearly motionlessly, delicately painting on the other wing._

_There you go, Butters hears the man say, and the girl thanks him and joins the game. Butters emerges from the bouncing balloons and stands in front of him._

_Can you draw dinosaurs? he asks._

_Yeah, sure I can, the man says, a smile clenching the corner of his lips._

_Cool, Butters says. Draw a T. Rex on my cheek, okay?_

_Okay, he agrees, and he leans in close to Butters' cheek and swipes green on his brush. Long minutes go by and he says, Alright, kiddo. Wear it with pride._

_Thanks, he says, and pauses for a second to look in the mirror before joining the rest of the kids. It's green and swoops around his face so its mouth is over his lips. When he opens his mouth, it looks like the dinosaur is roaring, ready to burst into life. _

_Wow! he says. Jamie sides up to him and grins._

_He's pretty good, huh, he says._

_Super good! Butters replies._

_Jamie tugs on his arm. C'mon, we're gonna make a fort._

_The next couple of hours of the party go smoothly, with Jamie's mother coming down with hot dogs for everyone. She talks briefly to Brandie's uncle and invites him upstairs to join the other parents, who are having coffee upstairs._

_No, he says. I'll supervise down here._

_Well, thanks, she says. Come upstairs when you feel like it._

_He nods and says he will. Butters watches him out of the corner of his eye and decides he's kind of a weird guy. Good at painting, though. He touches the dinosaur on his face gingerly and smiles while he chews. Jamie's teaching everyone that it tastes really good when you put chips in hot dog buns. Butters tears his attention away to learn just how many chips and what kind to use._

_When they finish eating, Brandie's uncle clears the plates and goes upstairs. He lingers up there for ten or fifteen minutes; in the meantime, Jamie sets up a new game to play, something to do with a lot of Play-Doh and the promise of gummy worms to the winner. Butters doesn't notice Brandie's uncle coming back down, but when Butters does look up, he's nestles in his stool around a multitude of balloons. He bounces one absentmindedly between right hand and left hand._

_Some minutes pass and Jamie's mom calls from the stair case, Clean up what you're doing! We're going to have cake in five minutes!_

_The kids yelp for joy and start scrambling, stuffing Play-Doh back into containers and talking about what kind of cake it's going to be._

_Kids, could you all look here for a minute? Brandie's uncle says. Over the course of the game, he's collected all the stray balloons and made a handsome pile around his little stool. His eyes are large and tired-looking. His face is all gently wrinkled. Grey is shot through his hair in tiny silver streaks. Butters is suddenly aware of just how old this man looks, and a phrase pops into his head: _Forty-something_._

_It's the first time in his memory that he's bothered to estimate anybody's age._

_He starts throwing all the balloons in the air at the kids, lightly. They shriek with laughter and start swatting the balloons around. Butters grins automatically and watches the man, who reaches into his sweater and pulls out—_

_Is that a gun? _

_What's that? Butters asks, just to confirm his suspicions, but he's drowned out by the cacophony of kids enjoying themselves. The man's hands wrap around the gun butt and his finger sneaks up to the trigger. His hands are shaking, but his face is deadpan. Butters' smile drops off his face and something horrid grows uncomfortably in his stomach._

_Jamie! Butters shouts. Look!_

_Jamie looks at Butters, curly brown hair, pug nose, and then looks the direction of Brandie's uncle. His eyes widen, his smile unsteady, and then_

_a bang_

_a pop_

_a crash_

_another bang_

_all before Butters can blink._

_The wall behind Jamie is red and splattered. The girl standing behind him is coated and she's probably screaming, but there's an alarm in Butters' ears that makes it impossible to hear anything but the bang reverberating in his head. He looks slowly around and there's Jamie's uncle, toppled backwards over his stool and his paints. The wall above him is red and there are chunks of something dripping off._

_Jamie's parents, Butters' parents, and a few other adults he doesn't recognize run into the basement. They're stuck in inertia for one still second, and then the women start screaming. One of the men throws up. Butters looks dumbly at them, at Jamie's mother, who's howling, Jamie!_

_He looks mutely to the ground and there's Jamie, a hole through his forehead and his eyes rolled upwards. A popped balloon lies sadly on the floor next to him. There's something evil in the room that Butters is wholly aware of, clenching them all around the throat._

_The children are either shocked into pause mode or wailing relentlessly. Butters sits on the floor and realizes there's that red on his shirt._

_He knows what blood is. It's what comes out of his skinned knees and paper cuts, but it's just so much easier to call it red._

_The whole room feels red. The static of screams grating his ears; red. The words passed scraping his mind raw; red. The stained carpet flooding his vision; red. The smell and essence he tastes in the air; red. The balloons coloured blue and yellow and green and pink dripping quietly; red._

_The awful silence in his mind; red._

_(. . .)_

The presence of his head on his shoulder is the first thing he wakes up to, and the pressure of his eyes in his sockets is the second. He moans and sits up, rests his head in his hands.

"You were certainly out for a while," Kelly says.

"How long?" Butter asks, snapping awake.

"Don't worry, not that long. Eleven minutes."

"Eleven minutes?" he gasps.

"Some are out for hours. It could have been worse."

"I- Oh," he says, gripping his temples. "That's long for me."

"Has this happened before?" Kelly asks, kneeling down next to him.

"Once or twice," Butters says, "but they've been for seconds. Just down and up, kinda like a spring."

"Can you describe what you experienced at all?" Kelly asks gently.

"Oh," he sighs. "I relived the place where my fear of balloons comes from. Everything I remember, anyway, but I remember everything pretty much perfectly, so I think I'm about ninety percent accurate."

"Can you go into detail at all?"

Butters shakes his head. "Not here. Maybe in therapy tomorrow."

Kelly nods. "We're going to end the test here. You've expressed the extremity of your reaction quite sufficiently, I think. You may leave whenever you feel strong enough to go."

"What else were you gonna do?" Butters asks.

"If you passed the balloon-passing test, we were going to move on and see if you could inflate one as well."

He shakes his head again. "Not a chance, mister."

"So I've concluded."

Kelly stands and writes something on his board. Butters waits for a few more second, just breathing on the ground, residually lightheaded, then gets up and stumbles towards the door.

"Thanks," he says while opening it, but he realizes he's not thankful at all.

Kelly doesn't answer to this, but says, "See you later, Butters," instead.

The door shuts quietly behind him, and he sighs heavily. He doesn't feel like crying at all. He doesn't feel anything.

_(do you feel strong now?)_

He wipes his eyes for good measure and walks back into the common area, where his accomplices are spread around the tables, Stan and Kyle occupied with Cat's Cradle once again at one table, and Wendy eying Kenny's cards while he plays Poker with Craig.

"I'm back," he says.

"That was quick," Wendy says, look up. "Second fastest, I think. Right under Kyle."

"It didn't work out," he says, sitting on Craig's side of the table and glancing at his hand. He has shit cards, but he has more tiny folded paper squares (seemingly the currency in this game) on his side than Kenny has on his.

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"I uh, I fainted. They had to cancel the test they were gonna run." He's beginning to regret his no half-truths law, but the rest seem to be abiding by it. It just makes him feel like a failure, to admit he fainted at the sight of a goddamned _Happy Birthday _balloon.

"Oh, shit," Kenny says, laying his cards flat. Over his shoulder, Stan and Kyle are looking up, string cast aside. He's pretty sure it's Stan's shoelace again. "Are you alright, sugar?"

"Yeah," he says glumly.

"What'd they do?"

"They, um. They didn't really do anything. They just had this balloon, and they were gonna throw it to me, but I fainted instead. I had a flashback, back from when I was six."

He pauses and wonders if he should tell them what happened at that birthday party. He hates talking about it, but he'd rather just get it over with. He takes a second to breathe, and then says, "When I was six, I went to a birthday party and a kid was shot right in front of everyone. I saw the whole thing. This is the long-term damage."

Even Craig looks up at this, brows up and eyes wide. "What the shit? This happened?" he says.

"Yeah. This happened," Butters mumbles. "You don't have to look so— so _surprised_."

Craig leans back into his chair and puts his cards down. "I get it, man. I just didn't know. That must be a mindfuck to live with."

It bothers him that Craig couldn't work up the heart to say something a little nicer, a little more sympathetic, but this is as sensitive as he knows he's going to get. "It is," he sighs. "I was on pills to help me sleep, but I've been gettin' along pretty good without 'em lately. I haven't been taking them for over a year now." He doesn't know why he tells them this; it just slips out before he can stop it.

There's a second of silence while he sulks. Then, Kenny picks up his cards and flips them at Craig. They bounce harmlessly off his shoulders.

"I fold," he says.

"Thank god," Craig says, and leans over to his side to pick up the fallen cards.

"Butters and I are gonna draw unicorns and cuddle," Kenny continues, standing up and walking over to the vast store of paper. He snatches a few pages and a couple of pens and sits in the chair next to Butters.

"Okay, now that we're all nicely settled in," he says, handing a blue pen to Butters and giving him a sideways squeeze. Butters twirls the pen in his fingers (a skill he learned from Craig in the Biology class they share) and waits for Kenny to let go. He'd normally love a hug, but he's not feeling it right now. Kenny gets the message and lets his arm fall off his shoulders.

"I can't draw worth shit, just so you know," Kenny warns, placing pen to paper.

"I don't mind," he replies, looking forward to seeing Kenny butcher some drawings. Kenny draws a crude unicorn and gives up at the hind leg, and Butters just laughs.

He sketches one quickly. Kenny make _oohs_ and _ahs_ and jealous noises. It's just a cartoony little doodle that he didn't put much effort it, but he's learned over the years that when it comes to drawing, it's not hard to impress people who can't draw. The praise is silly, but he'd be lying if he said it didn't help a little bit.

Kenny ropes Craig into drawing a unicorn, and Craig produces a shitty, shitty unicorn with sparkly eyes and a neck that fits a giraffe better than a unicorn. He passes it down to Wendy, who scribbles a poor My Little Pony.

"Stan, Kyle! You gonna join?" Butters offers.

Stan shakes his head. "We're good, man. We'll come around later and see the results, though."

"You're just gonna sit over there and play Cat's Cradle forever?" Kenny jeers.

"Maybe. We could put in a movie or something."

There's a widespread groan.

"Not another fucking movie, Stan! I am so sick of watching movies!" Wendy says, running her fingers through her hair.

"Just a suggestion," he says meekly, picking the string up from Kyle.

"What time is it?" Kenny asks. "We could go get food if it's lunch time."

Craig pulls his phone out and checks. "11:56."

"They start serving at 11:45, right?"

"Yup. You know what they're making?" Craig asks. Kenny shrugs in reply.

"You wanna find out?" he asks.

"Why not," Craig says.

The rest of them tag along. They're serving soup, which is palatable, though suspiciously green and tasting of lime. Stan goes to ask about it and discovers that they're eating something called avocado citrus soup, something that none of them have experienced in their small town, nobody-to-impress life. The most appealing thing about it is that it makes a delightful noise when allowed to slide off the spoon and land in a thick pile on the surface. Saying it's satisfying is perhaps putting it too strongly, but the bread served along with it is fine (though not so excellent dipped in the soup, they discover). They leave the dining area still making faces and tittering about it, and when they settle back in their spots, they're still talking about it. Never has a soup garnered so much attention.

The next while goes by uneventfully. Stan and Kyle go back to their Cat's Cradle (made of the same shoelace as the first time) but sit at the same table as the rest of them. Craig teaches Wendy and Butters (and refreshes Kenny) how to play Hearts and the four of them play for a half-hour or so. Eventually, everyone disperses around the room again. By ten after one, Wendy and Butters have migrated out of the game and have started reading paperbacks found in a bookshelf at the back. Wendy paws through a two-bit adventure while Butters reads Jodie Picoult. Craig makes coffee and shuffles cards while nursing a mug of it, listening to Kenny ramble endlessly while he sips at his own cup. Stan and Kyle drink green tea and talk about who they hate in their English class.

"It's been kind of a long time. What do you think the holdup is?" Wendy asks.

"Dunno," Butters replies, as the others seem caught up in their little conversations. "You're next, huh?"

"Don't remind me," she mutters.

"You brought it up, girlie," he snips, playfully snarky. "Maybe your test is more detailed than the rest of ours. The building of it, I mean."

"How do they test against the fear of being left behind?" she asks, absentmindedly twisting her sleeves. "You were easy. All they needed was a balloon."

"I don't know, sorry," he apologizes, as if it's his responsibility to know.

She sighs and looks at the clock on the wall for several long seconds, and when time doesn't seem to go any faster, she flips to the back of the book and reads the ending. With a name like _The Dragon's Secret_, she's assuming little from the plot. The dragon's secret is that he's actually human, and she snaps the book shut with the disdain a book of such poor quality deserves.

"_Could Wendy Testaburger please report to the treatment room, Wendy Testaburger, thank you."_

Butters lays his book on the arm of the couch and look over at her. "Good luck, Wendy," he says simply, sincerely.

She sighs again, louder, and stands up. She tugs her sweater down and says, "You wanna come see me off, Stan?"

"Absolutely," he replies, shuffling his chair back. She waits while he stands up and also rearranges his clothes, which have ridden up unflatteringly while he's been sitting. He extends an arm to her and says, "Shall we?"

She smiles and takes it.

"Hope it goes alright," Kyle says. "You'll be okay."

"You keep your chin up, chickadee," Kenny calls.

"Thanks," she calls over her shoulder.

They stop walking as they turn the corner.

"Listen, Wends — they watch you go in on the cameras, I don't know if they can hear too but they definitely watch, so I'm not gonna hang around too long. You'll be fine, it's not really so bad. Just try not to let them get to you and keep your head up," he says, tapping her chin. "I love you. Good luck."

"Thanks, Stan," she says, and they kiss once, briefly, on the lips. She still doesn't like the thought of cameras all over, even though she's encountered them several times. Stan waves and walks away before she has the chance to become upset. She watches him go, even though she knows she shouldn't. When he's gone, she looks at the door and nips the inside of her lip.

"Here we go," she whispers, twisting the knob and walking in.

Kelly, Victoria and Dan stand in front of a velour curtain, stretching all the way from the skyscraping ceiling down to the caramel cork floor. They look up from their clipboards when she walks in, and Kelly nods and smiles in greeting.

"Good afternoon, Wendy. How are you today?"

"Fine, thanks," she says. "How about you?"

He laughs. "It's been a busy day."

"I can imagine," she says. Small talk is easy, easier than real conversation.

"Yes, yes. Shall we begin?" he asks, dipping his head towards the curtain.

"Oh. Right. I suppose we should," she says, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her jeans.

"That's the spirit," he says. "Now, you know of course that we'll be testing against athazagoraphobia, the fear of being forgotten, ignored, or left behind. Ready to start?"

"Could you at least tell me what's going to happen?" she asks.

"We're going on a walk. Trust me, it's nothing you can hurt yourself on."

She nods, but she's not sure she believes him.

He pulls the curtain open, and before she can really see what's going on behind it, he ushers her up what looks like a crude observational tower made of a step-stool and a five-foot block. From the top, she can see why it took them two hours to prepare her test; they've created a huge maze of the movable walls the others have been talking about. They're maybe ten feet tall, with the ceiling being about fifteen. Two hours now feels like a very modest amount of time, considering they put all this together.

"Holy Christ," she gapes, "this is amazing."

"Yes, I'm quite pleased with the results," Kelly says. "Not an easy maze by any means."

"You didn't just build this!" she says.

"Our crew works very quickly, but this isn't an original design by any means," Kelly says, shrugging as if this is no big deal.

"It's a much smaller and somewhat modified version of the Hampton Court maze," Victoria adds.

"The Hampton Court maze," she repeats dumbly. "What does this have to do with me? I'm fine with mazes, Kelly."

"I know that, Wendy," he replies. "You and I are going to walk through. Just follow my heels. This design is notorious for its twists and bends."

"Sure," she says, following right after him as they walks into the entrance of the maze. Shortly after they turn the first corner, she hears a heavy-sounding scraping. She glances over her shoulder and asks, "What was that?"

"I wouldn't worry," Kelly says with a shrug.

She's still looking behind as they round another corner and approach a three-way split. Kelly goes down the middle. She tries to see where the other ways go, but she can't look for too long, as Kelly turns another hairpin corner.

They approach another divide, and just before she can tell which way Kelly's headed, the light flash off. She yelps in surprise, jumping back. They come on short seconds later, and when she looks up, the man she's to follow is gone.

"Dr. Kelly?" she yells, looking down both paths. He's nowhere to be seen.

"Kelly!" she repeats, turning around and beginning to retrace her steps. She runs straight and turns at the corner of the maze, yet when she thinks she's back where she came from, there's nothing but a dead end.

"Kelly! This isn't fucking funny!" she screams, running past the dead end and finding another one. She turns around again and dashes down to the other end of the hall, turning the corner and going left at the three-way split. The wall ends and she realizes that the left path and center all connect to the same hall. God knows where the right goes.

"Kelly! You can't just fucking leave me in here like this!" she howls. There's a blind panic eating her inside out, and all she can think of is running, just running until she gets out. She's back at the divide where she lost Kelly, and she whips her head around wildly.

_(missed each other going around the gas pumps)_

"Oh, shit," she whimpers. A moment's thought passes and she darts down the left side. It turns sharply once, then again, and she finds herself at another dead end. She snaps back and dashes back to the divide, going right this time. This one leads into a long hallway with two exits visible; one on her right-hand side about halfway down, and another corner at the end. There's panic still splashing in her stomach, and her brain is screaming

_(run! run! run!)_

but her legs are giving out and her body is betraying her. If she keeps running like this, she'll fall over. Wendy is not a runner. She goes on walks with her mom and she spends half an hour every morning on a yoga regime she's perfected, but she's unpracticed in endurance exercises such as running. She's gasping, but she makes it to the end of the hall and turns the corner. From what she sees, it goes back up and turns again. Panting hard, she slows to a walk. Without the physical distraction, the fear comes on, and it hits her hard, right between the eyes.

_(they're gone they're gone and you're alone)_

_(do they even know you're still in here?)_

_(have they forgotten?)_

She blinks away tears and makes herself run again, down the hall and around the corner, which predictably leads to another long hall and corner.

"Fucking _hell,_" she moans, slowing back to a jog, feet heavy on the sound-absorbing floor. She trots to the end and finds another long hallway. She stops and breathes hard, and for a second all she can think of is how fucking awful this is before the fear hits her again.

_(they've forgotten and you're alone)_

_(alone)_

She gasps for another quick breath and runs down to the end of the hall. Her feet feel like they might weigh a hundred pounds each, her legs moving robotically.

At the end of the hall, she realizes she's back at the three exits, but she's come out of the hall on the right; in other words, she's right back again where she started.

"You _fuckers!_" she shrieks. "You can't just fucking leave me like this, I don't even know where I'm going! I've done this whole fucking maze and I'm back where I started again!"

She stands there for a second and sniffs, rubbing her eyes, allowing herself a moment of self-pity before she remembers that there's one hall she didn't go down, the entrance on her right side when she went right at the divide. She lopes back up there, feeling wounded, and walks down the right side. Halfway down the hall, there it is; the one entrance she missed.

"This is it," she says. "This is the only place I haven't gone."

She swabs her cheeks with her sleeves and walks shakily down it. The hallway it leads into is twist and turns sharply. Her feet carry her on autopilot down to the bend. She looks down the hall beyond the bend and it just seems to keep going.

"I can't fucking do this," she sobs, settling down in the sharp corner. She curls up and drops her head on her knees and just cries, breathing unsteadily and coughing with the overexertion of panic and too much running. Her stomach and torso are in twists and knots, and her legs ache dully. She hiccups and sniffles into the fabric of her sweater. Her knees are wet with tears and sticky with mucus and other hideous bodily fluids, but she doesn't care in the least. Wet knees don't matter; leaving does.

Time goes by and she doesn't bother to pick her head up. When she does, she looks down the hall for a long time, judging the distance and maybe how long it would take if she just crawled over. She makes a curious scoot forward and groans.

"I can't," she mumbles, horking back snot. Her whole face is wet and red, but she can't find it in her to clean herself up. She looks around again, just in case maybe something's changed in the last seconds, and her eyes come to rest on a spot of wall next to her. There's a square on the wall that looks removable.

"What's this?" she whispers to herself, and hooks a thumbnail into the crack. She pulls on it, and just before she feels her nail start to break, the panel shifts and threatens to come out. She eases it out gently and places it in her lap, and then begins to investigate what it was covering. It's a control panel with a few little switches and keyhole, and for a second she just stares at it, because why would a fucking wall need a control panel? She replaces the panel of wall and leans back to think about it for a while.

It should have been obvious, but her brain's running slow and her thoughts are disorganized. She remembers Stan's comment earlier questioning the height of the walls and decides they must have an extension inside to make them taller, with a minimum height of eight feet or so. The controls pull out the extension. She looks up and notices that every wall has a two-foot top that's slightly smaller than the rest of the wall. She knocks the wall she's leaning on with her fist and the bottom makes a hollow sort of thump, but near the middle the hollow sound disappears and it sounds solid again.

_(well look at you go solving mysteries)_

Despite her little victory, she feels no better. She wishes she was the kind of person who carries a watch, because she has no clue how long she's been here, and she didn't look at the time before she left. She keeps making these sad little promises to herself, _okay we'll get up and go soon. Okay, we'll leave in twenty seconds. We'll leave in a minute._ But with every deadline that passes (and many do), she becomes more aware of the fact that she's petrified. She can't fucking leave this spot.

She whimpers _goddamnit _in the most tragic voice she's ever heard herself make, and that in itself brings on another flood of tears.

_(so you're just going to sit here huh)_

_(well that's okay then maybe they'll remember you one of these days)_

"God fucking _damnit_!" she whines.

"Wendy?"

_(what?)_

"Wendy, are you there?"

She snaps her head up and wipes her cheeks and nose. "Yeah? I'm here."

"Oh, thank god," says Dan, turning the corner and coming face to face with her.

"Thank god what?"

"We've been looking for you. You're stuck in a blind spot, just beyond the cameras. If you had been just a foot or so over to the right, we would have seen you, but you really tucked yourself into that little nook. We started to worry."

"How long have I been here?" she asks, struck.

"About an hour."

"Holy shit!" she gasps. "Jesus!"

Dan nods. He taps a microphone on his shirt and says, "Everything's okay, I found her."

"Why did you leave me this long?" she demands, standing up. It must have been a long time; the heaviness of her limbs has disappeared.

"Accident. We intended to let you go for twenty minutes or so, just long enough to feel forgotten, so we could gauge your reaction, but you slipped into a blind spot while we weren't looking. We let it go for a half-hour longer, but you still didn't come out and Kelly was beginning to worry. He sent some of the staff to check the cameras and some more to check the maze, and, well, we've got you now," he tells her, leading her towards the exit.

"You let it go for _half an hour_?" she says. "That's fucking ridiculous!"

"I'm just the newbie, Wendy, I really can't say why Kelly decided that," he says hurridly.

So that's why he looks like Kelly's little secretary. "What does being the newbie consist of?" she asks, changing the topic and immediately feeling less explosive.

"Oh. I mostly watch, so far," he says, laughing nervously, clearly relieved she's calmed down. "I've only been here since January. Theoretically, I have the education and the training to be a nurse or a therapist, but I don't have enough experience. So, I do most of the filing work, assist with evaluation, and I'm just placed in situations where I can gain some experience with being responsible for anybody. Dr. Kelly wants to wait a year, maybe less, before I start working with the patients on a more personal level." He pauses and smiles. "I really admire Dr. Kelly. He has a really hands-on approach with his patients. The success levels are amazing."

"Really?" she asks, raising her brows. "I don't feel much better than I did last week."

"That's because you're at the beginning of your treatment. You'll see. By the end, you'll see massive improvements."

She's about to argue the point by using Stan's horrifying experience as a model, but she holds her tongue. This doesn't seem to be the time nor the place. Though Dan seems to spend a lot of time with Kelly, she doubts he knows that much. Asking him about it would merely fluster him.

They exit the maze through an opening she doesn't remember, leading her to believe this was never a fair maze. Kelly and Victoria stand expectantly. Wendy watches them without making eye contact.

"We're sorry, Wendy. I never intended for you be in there for so long," Kelly says, and she can't make herself believe that regardless of how sincere he sounds. She nods curtly.

"We have the information we need. You're free to go."

She leaves without saying anything, the door clicking shut lightly despite its weight. Outside, she doesn't feel anything but this dull anger simmering in her stomach, bubbles popping and releasing tiny, furious thoughts. She grits her teeth and holds her temples, muttering hissed obscenities under her breath. The anger steams quietly on low heat, but she can feel it clouding her eyes and she knows she's going to snap if she doesn't do something about it. There's no fear left in her; just anger, venomous anger.

_(feelings? no sorry there are none left here)_

_(I just want to break that madman's neck and HURT him and HURT him and HURT)_

And suddenly she's scared of herself, of how badly she wants to do terrible things to him. This has happened before in her past; she doesn't call herself an emotional person but there are people in her life that can push her buttons just the right way to make her see red and only red, and she doesn't like it. She's snapped in front of people before and it's not pretty; she's hospitalized two people in her life and caused bleeding noses on triple that, at least. For some, this amount of scraps is nothing, but for her, it's a lot more than she's comfortable with. It scares her, how easy it is to hurt somebody. There's nothing hard about getting a good hit in when nobody's expecting it. And there's nothing hard about saying something that will ruin somebody's life, something she's never done alone but has certainly aided in within playgroup gossip.

This is what scares her; the reality that she is capable of hideous things.

_(I just want to hurt him . . .)_

"Fuck," she says. The weight of the word feels nice in her mouth, the stigma around it soothing. She tosses words like that around too much for her own good. They lose their meaning when you use them so much. If she was friends with different people, perhaps she wouldn't do it as much, but she doesn't even have to do that. Nobody notices when you stop swearing; it's starting that makes everyone notice. She figures as long as she's not like Kenny, who has to try very consciously not to swear, she's fine.

The anger in her has ebbed away, and she feels fine enough to join her friends. They don't notice her coming in, which makes her frown. She approaches quietly and sees that Stan is sitting on the floor in front of one of the couches, tapping at Craig's phone. The others are standing near him or sitting on the couches, leaning forward.

"I can only get static," he says.

"Try 710 AM. That's a newscast, I think," Craig says.

"Okay," Stan says, and he taps at the phone for a second or two. The quiet sound of static fills the air.

"Nope," he sighs.

"Fiddle with it some more."

"You got it."

Wendy decided this is a decent time to wander in. "Hey," she says.

They look up. "Hey, Wendy," Stan says. "You were gone for a long time. Did everything go okay?"

"They had we walk through a maze and I ended up resting in a blind spot. They weren't sure where I'd gone, so they left me for a while to see if I'd come out. I didn't, so they had to come get me."

"A maze? What's that got to do with you?" Stan asks, eyes moving back to Craig's phone.

"They walked me through it and then ditched me. They left me alone, and that's what aspect of my phobia they were going at."

Stan looks up, brows knitted in concern. "Jesus, baby. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. It dissipates pretty quickly once I realize I haven't been forgotten. I was upset, though, for a while."

"Good," Stan says. "We were getting a little worried."

"I had no idea how much time was passing," she admits, shaking her head. She sits on the arm of the couch and asks, "So what are you doing?"

"Seeing if there's radio. I mean, you can choose not to have internet, and you can cut off service, but public radio's everywhere, man. We're kind of in the middle of nowhere, though. We haven't had much luck."

"Oh. How long have you been trying?"

"A couple of minutes. We found a religious station, but it was pretty crackly."

She gets up and walks over to Kenny, nudging his arm with her shoulder. He looks down at her and wraps an arm around her waist.

"How'd Stan get to borrow Craig's phone?" she asks under her breath.

"He just asked and Craig said sure. It was weird, man," he murmurs back.

"Hey, I got something!" Stan says. Craig, who's been lying prone on the couch, sits up and takes his phone back.

"A newscast or another religious station?" he asks, turning up the volume.

Behind the crackle of static, a vague male voice comes through: _". . . house fire in — krzzzkrzkrzzz — families homeless with little to no belongings to their — krzzzz — says the cause of the fire is most likely due to — krzkrzkrzz — left unattended. Police say that arson is not a — krzzkrzzzzz — In other news —"_

"Holy shit," Craig says, an uncharacteristically wide smile painted across his face.

"See? I got a newscast!" Stan hoots.

"This is fantastic," Craig says, still grinning. He saves the station as a favourite and puts his phone away. "Well done, Marsh."

"Why do you want a news station?" Wendy asks.

"Keep up with what's going on. I really don't think what they're doing here is legal, and I want to see if it'll come on the radio at all," Stan says. "Like, what if they report a batch of hospital patients missing? Something like that."

"You're gonna have to listen to it constantly if you're going to find when they do the national news," Wendy says.

"They'll do it at seven-thirty or eight or something. They always do important stuff on half-hours or even hours, at times when people are waking up or driving to work."

"Oh, yeah. Of course."

"Mm," Stan hums. "You wanna talk more about your test?" Kenny's arm slides off her waist as Stan looks up.

"No, not really, it was kind of — oh, right, wait, I found out that the walls all have extensions or something in them, there's a control panel on them that changes how tall they are. They don't get smaller than eight feet though, I think. I couldn't change it because you need a key to unlock the controls, but, yeah. So that's that."

Stan and Kenny look at each other for a second, and then Stan laughs lightly. "Fine, then. I thought my estimating skills were really just shit, but that makes sense. Good job, Wendy."

She smiles and says, "Thanks. It's going to be a while before they call Craig down — you're the last one, right? — so we'd better find something to do for a couple hours."

"No movies," Kyle says testily.

"Yeah, yeah."

They clean up faster than they took to set up the maze, giving them a much more tolerable hour and a half before they call anybody down. They do much the same thing as last time, Butters still chipping away at his silly romance/drama, whereas she's found a more interesting looking book about the life of a girl growing up in the shabby areas of Montréal. Kenny talks at Craig some more, Craig nodding occasionally and throwing in a few words while he practices false-shuffling cards. Stan and Kyle talk quietly about what kind of tattoo they'd get, if they liked tattoos (Kyle thinks they're idiotic, and in Stan's world, Kyle's word is law).

Just after the clock ticks past five-thirty, the intercom clicks on again.

"_Could Craig Tucker please report to the treatment area, Craig Tucker, thank you."_

Craig doesn't bat a lid, shuffling his cards like nothing happened. He spreads them across the table and they're all still in their perfect order of suits.

"Go, man. Waiting makes it worse," Kenny says, nudging him.

"I don't really want to," Craig says.

"It doesn't matter if you want to or not, you have to," Kenny replies, frowning.

"Look, I've been watching you guys and I really just don't think it's that beneficial. It seems like a shit scare," he mumbles.

"Bullshit. You're here, you'll do exactly what they fucking say."

"Who fucking cares, Kenny? There's gotta be better methods that shoving you right up against it."

Stan mutters _chickenshit_ from the other table. That catches Craig's attention, and he glares down at him.

"I'm not fucking scared. I think it's stupid."

"You're scared, man. Everyone's scared. Now get up or I'll carry you there," Kenny says snidely.

"Jesus Christ, it's just that—"

"Go," Kenny interrupts.

"Kenny, would you just fucking listen to me so—"

"Okay. I gave you a chance. Let's go," he says, standing up.

Craig stares at him as if he knows he's fighting a losing battle.

"Would you just fucking get up?" Kenny groans.

"Fine, okay," Craig says, shoving his chair back and standing up. Kenny walks over to him and bends over, grasping the inside of his thigh and his forearm.

"Hey, what the fuck do you think you're—"

"I'm going to carry you there," Kenny replies, hoisting him up fireman-style over his shoulders. He rearranges Craig slightly for comfort. Craig is silent (but somewhat red in the face) for a second or so, then he heaves a long, heavy sigh.

"You're actually doing this."

"Yeah," Kenny says.

"There's nothing I can do," Craig says.

"No. You hardly weigh a thing, Skinnybones."

Craig kicks at Kenny half-heartedly, then gives up.

"This isn't worth my effort," he concludes.

"Absolutely right," Kenny says.

There's a pause, and Craig says, "If you're gonna take me there, better start walking, buddy."

"Alrighty," Kenny replies. He starts walking fairly steadily towards the door, humming as he does. Craig makes a lazy salute to the rest of them as they round the corner, and they call a couple of good-lucks.

At the door, Kenny slides Craig off his shoulders and catches his breath. "Okay, you're not that light."

"You're not that strong."

"Touché, I suppose."

Kenny looks like he doesn't want to go. He just stands there like he doesn't know where to go next. Craig frowns.

"You gonna watch me go in?"

Kenny shrugs. "I guess."

"You don't have to mother me, Kenny."

Kenny leans over and pecks Craig on the temple. "I don't care. Good luck."

"Stop fucking kissing me," Craig says, shoving his arm.

"See you later," Kenny says, giving him a characteristic cheeky grin. Craig's always liked that abut Kenny; his easy, teasing smiles. Craig's one of those kids that scowls on picture day, and he liked to blame it on his braces, but he doesn't have them anymore and has no real reason to not smile when he wants to. Now it's a habit, and it's become a joke that working a smile out of Craig is an accomplishment.

Honestly, he's not so much into maintaining this image these days. When he was a kid, he wanted to be tough and stoic because being that way made sure you weren't targeted, and, as a result, he made it to high school with a reputation to the effect of _if you fuck with Craig, you'll lose your teeth. _Once in high school he had the friends he wanted and the respect he wanted, and suddenly intimidating his peers didn't matter anymore. Now, it's his personality; it's just so much easier than being sensitive. But when he sees Kenny dropping smiles like penny candies, he wonders if it's really easier to not bother. It's just that smiling gives the impression that you like whom you're talking to, and Craig doesn't like most people. Kenny's the only one he genuinely likes, and even then sometimes he hates Kenny, too. He does like smiling with Kenny though, and he likes how Kenny's eyes light up and he gets so goddamned pleased with himself when he does.

Once or twice, Kenny's said Craig has a really nice smile, pretty, even. Craig's not sure why Kenny cares so much, but he likes that too.

He shoves the door open and makes himself stop thinking about it, makes himself banish the small smile that's crept across his face while he was suspended in thought. Better not look too happy for the doctors.

The room he enters is at maximum height and surface area, and oddly enough, quite cold and damp. None of the others reported a difference in temperature, and now he's wondering if they didn't notice or they simply didn't receive such change. A skiff of fog sits on the floor, swirling around his knees. His throat tightens, but he forces himself to keep breathing normally. Victoria, Dan, and Kelly stand a few yards away, talking idly. Their feet are eaten by the fog.

_(I'm going to be eaten by the fog)_

"Hello, Craig," Kelly says. "How are you feeling today?"

Craig shrugs, attempting nonchalance through the increasing pressure in his lungs. "Fine."

"Good. You do know of course that we're testing against nebulaphobia," he says, looking at his clipboard. "The fear of fog. Not common, if I may say." He looks up and smiles. "But you don't seem to be that common of a person, do you?

This takes him by surprise. "What?"

"I'm entirely serious. You don't come by personalities like yourself that often."

"I figured I was just a B-grade loner," he says.

Kelly smiles. He has a whole dictionary of smiles. "I can see that. But I can also see that you're not the kind of person who wishes to be lonely. Am I correct?"

"Look, does this honestly have to do with anything? Can we get started?" Craig pleads, suddenly horribly aware that they watched him come in, watched Kenny kiss him goodbye. There are fucking cameras everywhere, and it makes him claustrophobic like he's never felt before.

"We certainly can. I apologize for my digression." He sticks his hand into the pocket of his nicely-pressed pants and pulls out a green rubber ball of average size. "The test is simple. I will throw the ball. You will find it and return it to me."

"Find it in the fog?" Craig repeats.

"Yes, in the fog. Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," Craig says, spitting it out before _are you kidding me_ can come out.

"Excellent," Kelly says with a grin. He throws the ball down the room with unremarkable force, not too hard but hard enough to get a couple of good bounces in. For a few seconds, he's frozen, because his feet are covered by the thick fog and if he can't see them, he might as well not have them. It takes him a moment of buildup, but he works up the nerve to kick at the fog and watch it go swirling in lazy currents. His feet still work. That's all the reassurance he needs, but he'd be lying if he said there wasn't a thought at the front of his mind that was still trying to convince him that he was going to be eaten away.

Craig starts trotting in the general direction of the ball, and for the first few seconds it goes fine but then he looks down and notices the fog swirling and twirling around his legs.

"Holy shit," he says, and runs faster. It's grappling at his ankles, at his calves, and he feels like he has to outrun a monster that simply cannot be outrun. He's aware of the panic building in his chest, and he glances behind him to judge how far he's gone, just to give his mind a distraction.

Perhaps it's an ill-placed shadow, perhaps it's the way the mist moves, but for a second, he sees a figure. It's only for a second, and it's shadowy and out of the corner of his eye, but all it takes is that one moment and his brain plummets from the last scrap of rationality and he bolts.

_(HOLY FUCK)_

_(NO)_

_(NO WE ARE GETTING OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW)_

He stumbles on his own fucking feet in the pure, delirious fear that shrieks _run run_ and his ankle rolls underneath him. He falls hard on it and finds himself on the ground before he can even process what happened. His thoughts are still all static, just this steady buzz of _no no no_ and the small part of his brain that's still here in this room is realizing that somewhere far away, a body part it screaming in agony.

A sound of pain and misery almost slips out between his panicked breaths, but he gnaws on his lips to make sure they don't open anymore. He curls up on his side and watches the fog move with every laboured exhalation through his nose. The static is still there and it's loud, drowning out his ears and the rest of what could be a thought worth thinking about. The static is loud and it hurts his temples, but he's always had loud thoughts because that's what you do when you're trying to be tough; you stay quiet, even when everything hurts, and so, to compensate, another part of your being makes the noise that begs to be uttered. Another small part of his brain awakens, and this is the part that realizes there's fog swimming around his shoulders.

_(NO NONONO BZZZZ NO NO BZZZ BZ BZZ)_

_(pain)_

_(fog fog)_

_(BZZZZ NONONONO BZZZZZZ NO BZZ)_

_(pain fog breathe can't breathe)_

A sad, pitiful sound that toes the line between a whimper and a moan finally escapes through his heavy breathing, and he hates himself for the weakness but feels better by the release. He sits up and gets his head over the fog and instantly his breathing comes much better without the noose of mist around him, though the rest of his body is still tight and constricted, like being wrapped up in saran wrap. Kelly's little clique watches with eagle eyes, waiting for him to do something. The pressure to continue is as thick as the fog, and in an attempt to thin it, he stands up slowly, realizing halfway up that he foot is certainly twisted quite badly if not altogether sprained. There's a force pushing up from his burning throat, and he takes his lips in teeth again to keep it from reaching his eyes.

"Are you alright, Craig?" Kelly says.

"No," Craig replies. His voice wobbles with fear and hurt and suppression of tears. He bites harder on his lip and opens up another old wound, filling his mouth with the sharp taste of blood.

Kelly starts walking over, and Craig does his best to pull himself together before he gets there. He's not sure he could bear Kelly's sympathetic face. "What caused that fall?" Kelly asks with worried eyes.

"I tripped," Craig says, looking at the ground to hide his flushed face and dilated eyes.

"You look like you were startled by something," Kelly says.

Craig licks some blood from the inside of his lip and says, "Was there somebody else in here?"

Kelly frowns, so Craig continues.

"It was just for a second, but I saw something . . . I don't know what it was, but it looked like a person and I — I got scared," he mumbles.

"Somebody you know?" Kelly asks gently.

_(as a matter of fact yes)_

_(but I don't believe I'll be going into that right now)_

Craig opts to say nothing. Kelly and Victoria trade glances. Dan looks worried, but he keeps his mouth shut obediently.

"Nobody but us was in here, Craig. If you saw something, it was your imagination playing tricks on you," Kelly says finally.

"I thought so," Craig says. "It was only for a second. When I looked up again it was gone."

Kelly nods and takes the clipboard from Dan. He scribbles something on it and asks, "Is your foot okay?"

Craig shakes his head. He's thankful for the subject change. "Sprained, I think."

"Oh? Dan, would you have a look?"

Dan asks Craig to sit down, and he does. Dan's big fingers untie Craig's shoelace and loosen it to the point where it can just slip off. Craig winces as it leaves his foot. Dan pulls down his sock and looks at his ankle, moving his head to get different angles.

"Definitely a sprain. See all the swelling?" he says, lightly touching the joint.

"Mm," Craig hums. The breathing's getting slowly easier, though he prefers to breathe through his mouth still. He wants to inch a little closer to them, make a little human barrier and keep him safe even though he's admitted that he doesn't trust them anymore.

"Come on, let's get up," Dan says, grabbing Craig's hands and pulling him upright. "Can you put any weight on it?"

Craig tests it and shrugs. "A little. I don't want to walk on it."

"Can you turn it?"

He tries that too, reports, "A little."

Dan nods. "Sounds like everything's okay. We'll put a brace on it and you'll be fine."

"Oh, lovely," Craig sighs. The last thing he needs is a sprained ankle to go along with all of this. He's done this a few times before, most recently back in September when he was in the elementary school playground, jumping off of swings with Kenny. He landed wrong and sprained his ankle quite badly. Kenny had apologized for roping him into doing stupid shit with him with a dime bag of weed the next day, but Craig couldn't stay mad at him long enough for it to be an apology gift rather than a regular gift.

"Can I go?" he says.

Kelly hesitates and looks at his board. "That ended a little faster than I would have preferred. I was hoping to get a clearer reaction, but I think I've got enough to build from."

"Oh."

"It would be quite useful for us if you could tell me more about what you experienced in therapy tomorrow. Would that be alright?"

Craig's shoulders twitch. "Sure. I don't mind."

"Excellent. We're done here, then. Dan will take you to wrap up your foot."

"Okay," Craig says.

Kelly and Victoria turn and start talking. Dan looks at him and says, "Can you walk?"

"I don't want to. Not on this," Craig says. He looks at the fog and adds, "Not through this, either."

"It's most tender right after you sprain it. Would you prefer if I carried you?" he offers.

"Um. Sure, I guess. Not over the shoulder, though, I did that today already."

Dan gives him a funny look and then smiles. "Long story?"

"Not really."

"Got it. How about bridal style?" He says it with a light bent to his voice, joking but serious.

"Sure, why not," Craig says, figuring he's got nothing to gain or lose. Dan laughs, light and lilting.

_(kinda like Kenny's laugh hey)_

"Alright, then. Here we go." He leans over and slides a hand behind Craig's knees and shoulders, and in one swift movement he lifts Craig off the ground and into his arms. He shifts and says, "We good?"

"We're good. I'm not too heavy or anything, right?"

Dan snorts. "Not in the least."

They go the opposite direction of the door Craig came through, and Dan notices the way Craig cranes his neck in confusion and tell him there's a small office on the other end of the room. He drops Craig to his feet gently and unlocks the office with a small key on a large ring of keys stuck in his pocket. The office has a stretcher, a desk similar to the one in Kelly's office (even the computer is the same), a mini-freezer and a shelf with glass doors boasting and impressive library of bandages and pills and the sort. Craig hobbles over to the stretches and sits down on top of it. The pressure in his lungs finally dissipates now that he's out of the fog. Dan opens the shelf and roots around until he pulls out a black ankle brace. He pulls it over Craig's foot and tightens the Velcro at the top.

"There we go. Just give me a second and I'll grab you a cold pack," he says, ducking down to the freezer and pulling open the door. He grabs a reusable cold pack and hands it to Craig.

"I've sprained my ankles before, Dan. I know how to look after them," Craig says before Dan can start explaining.

"Ah, sorry. Well, you know the drill, then. I'll ask Kelly if we can move this little freezer into your room so you don't have to keep bringing the used-up cold packs to me. But for now, you can go. Do you need a hand, or can you handle it?"

"I think I can get to the common area. Thanks, though," Craig says. He hops off the stretcher and walks over to the door. "See you, then."

"Have a nice evening. Stay off the ankle," Dan says.

"I will," Craig replies. He shuts the door behind him and sees that the fog hasn't cleared.

He opens the door again and grudgingly requests another ferry service, which Dan provides with a jovial laugh.

He's glad when the door shuts behind him and he doesn't have to look at that grinning face anymore, because though Dan's a nice enough guy, Craig finds him tiresome, even if he does have Kenny's laugh.

_(but you find everyone tiresome don't you)_

It takes him a few steps before he gets the hang of limping again. He's had plenty of instances that have given him time to perfect the skill, but walking normally for six months or so gets you out of practice. He lands badly on it for a couple of steps before he finds a way to walk and keep most of the weight off of it.

The others are scattered around the room. Butters is doing homework that involves looking through a novel for a few seconds, then scribbling something down on a lined piece of paper, then looking back to the novel. Wendy is sitting on the floor with Stan and trying to get him into a few difficult-looking yoga poses. Kyle's reading a thick book that Craig recognizes as required reading. Kenny's tearing up strips of paper and folding little links to add to a large chain. The one he's got going so far is taped to the table and extends to the floor.

"I'm back. Hi," Craig announces, and he's well aware of how tactless it sounds when it leaves his mouth.

"Hi," Kenny says, finishing up a link before looking up. "How'd it — oh my god, what do you do to your foot?"

This makes the others all look up.

"I fell. Tripped over my own fucking feet," Craig says. He starts hopping over to a chair, but Kenny stands up and offers assistance. "Goddamn, you treat me like a toddler," Craig grumbles, but Kenny just laughs.

"Helping you when you're hurt doesn't count as treating you like a toddler."

Craig waits until he's seated and then says, "It really wasn't good. The room was huge, like gym size, and full of fog and they threw a rubber ball down it and made me fetch it. I tried but I thought I saw something and I freaked out, so I tripped and fucked up my ankle. I was pretty done so they let me leave." He pulls the brace off his ankle (which Kenny has propped on a chair) and puts the ice pack on it, sighing as he does. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Oh. Well, um, thanks for the report?" Wendy says tentatively, settling into a sort of stretch that Craig is certain he's not flexible enough to pull off.

"You're so welcome, Wendy."

She snorts. "Wiseass. How bad's the ankle?"

"Could be worse. It's just your average sprain."

"So not fractured or anything?"

"No. It'll be fine, I just have to keep off it and put ice on it."

"Sucks bad, Craig," Butters says from his spot at the other table. "You're gonna be out a foot for 'least a couple weeks, huh."

"More like three," he says.

"Oh. I've never sprained an ankle 'fore, so I wouldn't know," Butters says, smiling apologetically.

"Don't worry about it," Craig says.

"You're being so civil today," Kenny comments.

God, he hates that. He doesn't mind his reputation, but he hates it when people assume he's incapable of being nice. He likes arguing and gains a certain amount of pleasure from seeing people like Kyle and Wendy worked up, but that doesn't mean he can't be civil when the atmosphere calls for it.

He can't come up with a snappy comeback fast enough, so he rolls his eyes and puts his head on the table.

"Is it dinner yet, I'm hungry again."

Kenny checks the clock and says, "Still an hour or so to go, man."

"That was actually the worst soup in the world though," Craig says.

"Are we really going to talk about the soup again?" Kyle groans.

"Yes, we are. Don't tell me you're already over _avocado citrus_ soup," Craig replies.

"I was, just about, but then you brought it up again and now all I can hear in my head is avocado citrus soup."

"Oh my god," Wendy says. "That soup was so terrifying. It's just like, I don't want limes and avocados ever interacting again. They're on opposite ends of the spectrum and should stay that way."

"Aren't they fruit too?" Stan asks her.

She looks at him and frowns. "Um. Aren't they vegetables?"

"Are they?"

"I have no idea, actually," she says, looking defeated. "I never think about avocados."

"I didn't really think the soup was half-bad," Butters says. "Nice texture."

"But the lime in it! Blah," Wendy says.

"I didn't really notice anything wrong," Kenny says.

"'Course not, you just eat. You don't taste," Stan says. Kenny makes a sort of exasperated grunt which really does make Craig smile, though quietly.

Craig finds a book to entertain himself with, and they whittle away the time left before dinner's served. A few minutes before 5:30, they wander into the dining room and claim tables while the doctors file in, chatting about the day, and while the kitchen staff lays out the evening's meal. Kyle and Stan get a table for themselves and go up together when a cook calls out that the food is done.

"So I'm trying to think of the right adjective for how today went," Kyle begins.

"How about 'awful'?" Stan suggests.

"No, awful is too general. I was thinking something more like, um . . ."

"Horrendous?"

"Not quite the ring I wanted, but it'll do," Kyle says, handing a plate and utensils.

"How 'bout 'abominable?"

He considers it. "Today was abominable," he says, testing it out. He shakes his head. "Horrendous will have to do, man. Abominable just isn't right."

"Fine," Stan says with a shrug. He stabs a couple of slices of roast beef and scoop of mashed potatoes, and Kyle does the same. They leave the line with glasses of water and look around for their table.

"I think they took our table," Kyle says, pointing to a Maria and a young redhead he's seen around tittering away at a table near the door.

"Dicks," Stan says. "There's a table over there. I'm gonna go sit."

"Okay, man. I'll be there in a sec." He feels the need to glare at them for a few more seconds before being content to go to their new table, which won't be as nice as the one that was stolen from them.

He's just about to leave when he hears the redhead, say, "So did you see the kids today?"

Maria shakes her head. "No. I don't see any of them on treatment days. How'd they look?"

She shakes her head and takes a second to sip her tea. "Bad. The first one started crying when he got out."

"At least one usually does. It's pretty intense stuff. I wouldn't want to be the patient, honestly."

"Yeah, but I dunno. I always feel so bad for them once they get out," she says, clearing the hair from her eyes.

"Better get over it soon, the testing only gets more intense. The ones that do well now do better later," Maria says.

"I know," the redhead says, leaning back. "I just wonder about Dr. Kelly's methods sometimes."

Maria nods. "It's not pretty, but it works."

"It does, doesn't it."

Maria nods again. "It does."

The redhead sighs. "I just feel bad. Kelly's going to tear them apart."

"They come out fine, though," Maria says.

It's at this point that Kyle wants to run away, but he finds that his feet are bolted to the ground with nothing but _tear them apart_ running through his head.

_(tear them apart)_

He turns slowly and starts walking to Stan's table, his feet feeling far away from him.

_(Kelly's going to tear them apart)_

Stan looks at him funny when he sits down, and he might even ask what's wrong, but he's so far away and all Kyle can hear is

_(tear them apart_)

* * *

**I don't usually put notes at the end of chapters, but if you're interested in some behind-the-scenes work (read: complaining), headcanons, and writing I won't post here, check out my fancy writing blog! - catawampuswords . tumblr . com  
**


	5. Wait For Signs

**grr sorry for the wait, this chapter just did not want to happen. Hope you enjoy, and thank you for being with me!**

* * *

Joseph is fifty three years old, as Craig gathered by the birthday card sitting on his desk. He's an Italian guy, with a straight nose and all of his hair. He wears nice sweaters that his wife picks out for him and dark pants. No need for glasses or contacts, because his eyes are still fine, albeit wrinkled at the corners. For all of his perks, though, Joseph is always worried looking, and he sighs in great frequency when he talks to Craig. He gets halfway through a sentence and then he sighs and waves his hands around, searching for words.

Craig likes him. He lets Craig play with Ella, his snake, while they talk, and she slithers up and down his shirt and Craig's sentences are interrupted from time to time with a yelp when she finds a new place on his chest to explore. He doesn't play music or anything, but he has a few beanbags in his office that Craig likes to flop all over. They don't have two-way conversation like Kenny says he and his therapist have, but Craig doesn't mind at all. He really doesn't want to hear about Joseph's life stories anyway.

It took Craig a while to get used to therapy, with Kelly, with Victoria, or with Joseph. He's not a talkative person by nature, and the idea of having to sit in a room with somebody and talk for an hour or so seemed simply impossible. He assumed at some point, you'd simply run out of things to say. But that never seems to happen; there's always a point to elaborate on or something more to talk about.

After a few sessions, he found he liked the sessions with Joseph enough. He says stuff that's shit and doesn't really mean a thing, but sometimes he says stuff that is more personal in nature, the kind of stuff that he has to brace himself to say. Joseph is an articulate man, with an admirable vocabulary and a professional way of saying things. Craig likes this about him, his worried voice spilling out lovely words like _capricious_ and _intrinsically_ where others would say _unpredictable_ and _basically_.

"Tell me about your friends, Craig. You haven't told me much about them," Joseph asks today. Craig's laying on a beanbag and gently rotating his ankle, seeing how far he can bend it before it twangs with pain, playing it like an old guitar.

"There isn't much to tell," he sighs. "One's rich as fuck and once he took me his beach house in Florida for my birthday. He's cool, I guess. It's just frustrating how perfect he can be, I guess. He's captain of the swim team and he's got a perfect body and a nice girlfriend, and he's rich as hell, too. But he's okay. Nice enough. Kind of a dick sometimes, though. He flew me down to his beach house in Florida for my sixteenth, though. That was cool."

"What's his name?"

"Token," he says. "Why?"

"Just so I know," Joseph replies. "Are there any others you'd consider your friends?"

"Yeah. There's Clyde, whom I've known for-fucking-ever, since kindergarten, I think. He's kind of slow but he thinks I'm great. I don't know why. Even most of my friends think I'm an asshole." He smiles, but the humour is lacking. "He's actually pretty nice, he's just really simple, like he doesn't really live up to more than a one syllable word. But he doesn't know this. He thinks he's God's fucking gift to the world. Shallow as fuck."

"Does that irk you?"

"Of course," Craig scoffs. "He ditches me for his girlfriend all the time because his girlfriend is _so_ much more fucking important than me. Like, to him, who cares if we've been friends for twelve years or whatever? He gravitates right to whoever will suck his dick. He's always sorry when he blows me off but damn, it's just words."

"Do you still value his friendship?"

He nods, says, "Yeah, but I get tired of him."

Joseph sighs and says, "I get the feeling that's the way it is with most of your friends."

"Not unfair to say," Craig mumbles, suddenly feeling uncomfortably guilty. "There's Tweek. I think we became friends in fourth grade? Something like that. Anyway, he's my token weird friend. He drinks way too much coffee and he's always popping pills. He's got an anxiety disorder and OCD, I think, and all these fucking conspiracy theories! Fuck." Craig stops to chortle. "They're hilarious. I swear to god, fucking aliens and Taliban terrorists and this idea that the water is poisoned and slowing numbing our nervous system. And he can go on and on about them! You ask him about his water theory and he's got an essay, researched and everything."

"I see."

"Anyway, sorry. I honestly do like him a lot. I don't know if it's just all the shit he always has on his mind, or how he makes me laugh, but I can't make myself dislike him. I can only take so much of him at one time, then I get just sort of irritated by his jittering and babbling, but no, when I like him, I like him a lot. He's cool," Craig says. He's found the line of hurting and not hurting in his ankle and discovers a game in twitching it back and forth from hurt and comfort.

"What about Kenny?" Joseph asks, pushing up his sleeves. His brows crinkle in the same way Craig's mother's do when she's concerned. "You do consider Kenny your friend, don't you?"

"I do," Craig says. "He's just really easy to like. I don't think I even tried. But, you know, everyone knows Kenny. He's hard to miss."

"How so?"

Craig shrugs. "He's tall, so that pulls him out of the crowd most of the time. But it's really just his personality. He's extroverted, like one of those people that just goes over to a stranger and strikes up a conversation. So he's got all sorts of friends in places that nobody else would consider. Also, his dad's the town drunk. People know him as Stuart's kid." He twitches his foot too far and winces. "I feel bad for him, honestly. Every time he does something we'd call normal, like make honour roll or get a job, everyone talks about how _Stuart's kid is doing this, maybe he'll be different._"

"You haven't said anything you don't like about him," Joseph says.

"It doesn't really matter. He's all I've got in this place. If I couldn't stand Kenny, I'd have to — I don't know. Make nice with fucking Butters or something. And besides, it'd break his heart if I stopped talking to him."

"Oh?"

"He likes me," Craig says, tipping his head back and counting dots on the ceiling.

Joseph smiles. "I see. He's told you?"

"No. But he's not terribly subtle. It's not hard to pick up on," Craig replies.

"How does that make you feel?"

"I don't know. It's kind of nice. I feel a bit like a celebrity."

"Do you feel the same?"

Craig stares hard at the tiny dots, waiting for an answer to form. He realizes he's lost count. "I don't think so. Maybe a little, but not the way he feels for me." He feels like he's talking to Kenny, rejecting him, instead of simply talking to the therapist. It makes him a little sick.

"I would assume Kenny's gay?" Joseph asks.

"I guess. He swings everywhere, but he's never had a boyfriend. He slept with a guy once, though."

"And you?"

"Hmm?" Craig asks, glancing over. "No? I never had the opportunity."

"No, no. What is your sexual identity?" he reiterates.

"Gayish-straightish," Craig replies.

This makes Joseph smile. "An idiosyncratic label, if I've ever heard one."

"Look, I dunno," Craig sighs. "Everybody on the fucking planet thinks I'm gay. Stan and Kyle think I'm gay, Bebe — the girlfriend — thought I was gay. My dad thinks I'm gay. I don't really care, to be honest, like if I liked a guy I'd date a guy, if I liked a girl I'd date her. I don't fucking know," he says, rolling onto his stomach and hoping that the beanbags might just eat him up.

Joseph opens his mouth to speak, and then just sighs, waving his hands as if searching for words. "There's no simple yes or no to sexuality. Don't aggrieve yourself with labels. Let yourself pick who and what you want before you worry why."

"I forget you're an actual therapist and not just a dude I have to talk to sometimes."

Joseph laughs. "Then I'm doing my job just fine!"

Craig smiles back and hopes that maybe they'll move onto a different topic. They don't, of course. Joseph asks, "Is Kenny the sort of person that would tell you how he feels?"

"He — um. I don't actually know. He doesn't really date — like, he's had girlfriends, but they don't really last. He's said he has issues with confidence, which is stupid because he's the most confident kid I know," Craig says, shrugging, pulling at his sleeves. All of his hoodies have stretched sleeves.

"Is he really, or does he just seem that way? You always have to take in account how people project themselves to the outside world, and how they are alone. What would you be like if your personality only extended to what you showcased for everyone else to see?"

"I'd be a fucking dick. I think I'd hate myself," Craig says.

"And I would be an overly-inquisitive man who cannot settle for vagueness. But how would that be to live with? There is a certain—" he grasps for words, "—_liberty_ in saying I don't know what to have for breakfast or that I feel great without delving into why."

"And there's liberty in being nice," Craig says absently, eyes shifting out of focus. The session isn't even half over and the therapist's voice is already beginning to blend into grey.

"You understand, then," Joseph says, looking satisfied.

"Mm."

Craig gets up and goes over to Ella's cage. He reaches in and gently picks her up from the sandy bottom of the cage, where she had been lying languidly under the heat of her lamp. She slithers sluggishly up his arm as he walks back to his pile of beanbags.

"I fed her yesterday night. She might still be a little slow," Joseph says.

"She's okay," Craig says, trying not to twitch as she makes a home in the warmth of his sleeve. Her scales are smooth on his skin and the feeling is delightfully foreign.

"I think I'm gonna get a snake when I get home. They're cool," he says.

"They're lovely pets, in my opinion. I might be in the market for a new one myself, soon," Joseph says, looking at Craig sadly. "She's getting on in the years."

"Oh? How old is she?"

"Fourteen, in April."

"How long do they live?"

"About fifteen years. But twenty years is attainable," he says.

"Oh. She is getting old then," Craig replies, stroking her back through his sleeve.

"Unfortunately."

There's a lull in the conversation, in which Joseph picks dirt from his fingernails and Craig pushes the tiny tip of tail sticking out of his sleeve in hopes of making Ella move further up his arm. She doesn't even twitch.

"You seem done for today," Joseph says instead.

"I'm really done."

"You can go, if you'd like. I think that was productive enough for today."

"I thought you had to keep me for an hour," Craig says, rolling up his sleeve to try and get Ella out. She startles and slithers up his shoulder and out through the top of his shirt.

"For an hour, or until I feel you've had enough. If you're not in the mood to talk anymore, then there's little point in making you talk more. And besides, I believe we've covered enough ground today," Joseph says, as if it's normal.

He snaps upright, something angry twisting into his gut. "You're going to use him against me," he says lowly, trying to move easily and put Ella back without startling her further. She slides into her home like she's happy to be away from him.

Joseph looks pointedly at him. Not a sigh or a frown flickers on his face. "No. Not necessarily. You seem to have it in your head that we do this with the intent of making your life as miserable as possible. I share very little of what you tell me with Dr. Kelly — only what will help him in designing your treatment plan. We do what we do in the most effective manner."

"Bullshit."

"Not at all. Take your own treatment, for example. Kelly's decision was to use a general test to see how strong your fear was. My advice was to use a simple, clean test in design because from what I knew of you, needlessly elaborate actions bother you. Hence the big, bare room and the simplicity of the test itself."

"What the hell?"

"Or Kenny's test. His therapist said that Kenny is more likely to cooperate if he has the opportunity for personal gain, so Kelly gave him a challenge with a chance of victory. Wendy's test; structurally more intricate, because she thinks she's more astute and more capable than most of her peers. Shall I go on?"

"No, I get it, okay?" he snaps.

Joseph plows on anyway. "Butter's involved a simple game because he has a fairly playful personality. Stan's test was dramatic because he is. A simple test like yours would have left him underwhelmed, and his therapist recommended that he would have to be overwhelmed to impact him most. Kyle is like you, no-nonsense, so he also got a simple test."

"Kyle's dramatic as Stan," Craig says blankly.

"I'm not his therapist, Craig. I would guess that it's Stan that makes him dramatic, and since you never see him without Stan, that's the impression you would get."

"Whatever."

"So, there you go. I feel that we'll get a clearer reaction from you if you're by yourself. I get the sense that you put up fronts for people, and when we do treatment, we don't want fronts. We want your undiluted feelings."

"So you probably won't use him against me," Craig mumbles, leaning against the wall and avoiding Joseph's eyes, watching Ella instead.

"No, I can't see the point. I don't see a point in telling Dr. Kelly about it, even."

He doesn't reply, and just reaches into Ella's cage to run a finger down her back. She slinks away at his touch and hides in a small log-shaped structure.

"You don't have to look so defeated. We all think scary things sometimes, especially about people we care about," Joseph says.

"I don't care that fucking much about him," he mutters, hobbling over to the door.

"You can think that if you want. Have a good day," Joseph says, shaking the mouse and waking his computer. Craig waves and leaves, feeling rather downtrodden.

He enters the common area and gets a look of surprise from Butters and Kyle, who are waiting for their turn with the therapist. No wonder. He was barely in therapy twenty minutes; everyone else will be close to an hour, more sometimes. He finds a table and sits down, dragging a chair closer to put his bad foot on. There's nothing to do at his little island, because the bookshelf is far away and Stan has his phone to listen to the radio on, so he leans forward over his forearms and dozes off. It's not like he slept last night, not with the treatment so fresh in his mind. Kyle and Butters go back to what they were doing,

A good twenty minutes or so passes before somebody shakes his shoulder. His eyes open slowly, and out of the corner of his vision he can see Wendy's sweater, dusty red with sleeves too long for her arms. He wonders if she pulls at them like he does.

"Hey," he mumbles.

"Hey. Didn't sleep so well last night?" she asks. He sits up and rubs his eyes. There's sleep in his tear ducts that he must have neglected to wipe away when he woke.

"Did anyone?" he says.

"I don't get how you can do that."

"Do what?"

"Just go to sleep," she replies, gesturing to the table. "You're sitting in a barely-padded chair and sleeping on your arms. I can't even sleep on couches."

"Picky," he says, and she snorts.

"What are you doing out here anyway? You been out for long?" she continues, sitting on the edge of the table.

"Joseph let me go after like, twenty minutes. I said enough and he just sort of kicked me out." He notices his foot is entirely asleep. He heaves it off the chair and winces as the tingles start.

"Wow, you must have said some heavy shit to make him let you go so early," she says, eyebrows raised slightly.

"I know. Gave me time for a nap." He looks up at her for a second and asks, "What about you?"

"Same thing, I said enough and my therapist let me go, so I sent Kyle off — we have the same therapist — and now I'm done."

He doesn't really have a response, so he just nods.

"Hey, you wanna come outside with me? I haven't seen the grounds yet," she says, looking over her shoulder at the big glass doors.

"I can't really walk," he says.

"So just come outside. We don't have to walk around much."

He shrugs and gets up, pulls his sleeves down, and pushes his chair in. She takes a second to hop off the table and smooth down her clothes and they walk to the door, or in better words, she walks and he limps. When they approach the door, she opens it for him, which makes him feel like a cripple and also like a dignified little lady of the time when etiquette was rampant.

The air outside is still and cold, and the sky above is overcast. The heaviness of rain hang in the air, and Craig's about to comment on it when Wendy says, "Feels like rain."

"What did you expect?" he replies. "April showers bring — shit, it's not April."

"No, you're a couple weeks early."

"There any sayings about March?"

"In like a lion, out like a lamb," she supplies. He nods, and she continues with, "You sound fucked up."

"I'm tired. And therapy was weird."

"You're kind of weird in general," she comments. This strikes Craig as unnecessary, but there's nothing he cares to do about it.

She hums and looks around. The grounds are nice enough; there's a lawn dotted with tall trees stretching for a fair ways in front of them. A concrete walkway creates a perimeter around the lawn, and a chain link fence creates a cage around it. A few picnic tables are placed on the lawn, two under trees and one in the sun. Near the door, there's some shrubbery and some empty flower beds.

"Nice enough," he comments.

"Yeah. Probably nicer in the summer," she says, which seems so obvious there's no need to say it, but he just nods.

They walk out a little further, and once she discovers the grass is dry, they sit down. It's not at all warm out, and he's not sure how long she wants to stay. He zips his hoodie up a little further and lies down on his back. She sits next to him cross-legged, sparing him a smile as she gets comfortable. The sound of birdsong carries from the forest outside the fence.

"So, what'd you say that made your therapist let you out so fast?" she says.

"You don't need to know, do you?" he says, frowning.

"I would have told you," she says, pursing her lips.

"Yeah, okay Wendy."

"I'm sure it's not so bad," she says offhandedly. "I told mine about the times I've put kids in the hospital. They love that sort of deep, gritty, emotional stuff."

"I know. I've talked about that too."

"So what's the big deal? It's not like I'd tell anybody."

"Wendy, would you just stop?" he growls, running his hands through his hair.

She glares at him and says, "Jesus, fine. You don't have to be such an ass about it." Her voice drops off as she enters a sulk, pulling her knees to her chest moodily. Craig closes his eyes and listens to the birds for a while. It's almost pleasant, save Wendy's almost audible fuming beside him.

He only gets to enjoy the peace for a few seconds before she pierces into his concentration with a blunt, "Why do you hate me?"

This, he wasn't expecting. "What?" he says, propping himself on his elbows and looking at her.

"You're always arguing with me. It's like whenever I say anything, you have to say why your opinion is better and why I'm wrong and why I should have never spoken. It's like you have this need to compete with me! I don't do that to you. Why do you keep doing it to me?" she says, looking wounded.

His first instinct is to snap at her, because she's wrong when she says she never does this to him. To him, it feels like whenever _he_ puts in an opinion, it's _she_ who tries to correct him and tell him why he's wrong and why she's better. _She's_ the competitive one, not him. He doesn't hate her. In all honesty, he might even admire her guts, her intelligence, and her charisma. It's just this damned thick-headedness that gets to him, this _oh I'm always nice to you_ even when she struck up an argument with him just yesterday. Her arrogance is what he hates about her.

He chokes down the verbal assault that wants to come out of his mouth and takes a second to come up with a more collected reply. "I don't hate you. Take a minute to get that into your head." He waits while she frowns at him, and when she opens her mouth to speak, he continues. "I'm not always arguing or competing with you. I don't care to compete with you, Wendy, there's nothing in it for me. If anything, it's you who keeps trying to one-up me. Don't tell me you never do because you do. Often."

Now, she looks offended, but in an uncharacteristic turn of events, she keeps her head level. "I don't, Craig."

"You gloated about taking Honors English and assumed I hadn't, then looked offended when I said I had. You challenged my opinion when we talked about Stan's treatment when I wasn't talking to you. You tell me to be civil every time I look sideways at someone. You give me this weird look when I talk to Kenny, as if he's _your friend_ or something." This sends a pang through his stomach and he regrets saying it immediately. He recovers quickly and says, "Grow up, Wendy."

She opens her mouth, then glares at the ground.

"I'm sorry, do you disagree?" he says, sneering.

She's quiet for a second. Then, she says, "I didn't know you took Honors English. I thought you were just being an asshole. I didn't agree with what you were saying about what they did in Stan's treatment. You had the logical view on it, but I was mad and I ignored you. I tell you to be civil because let's face it, Craig, playing nice isn't your strong suit."

She looks at him for reaction and he just shrugs. She's right. She usually is.

"Lastly, I don't feel like you treat Kenny very well. I don't know if this is just how you treat all of your friends or if it's different when you're alone, but what I see looks one-sided." She sighs and finishes it with, "I was out of line. I don't like you but I want to be allies if we can't be friends."

Now it's his turn to be quiet; he didn't expect her to be so courteous, he didn't expect an apology, and what she said about Kenny is ridiculous and it's bringing heat to his face.

_(he's in your head he's in your heart)_

_(how'd that happen?)_

"I'm sorry too," he says, finally. "I like you, honestly. You're smart and I usually like what you stand up for. If you want to be friends, I won't mind that at all."

She looks surprised. "You don't dislike me? I thought you would have at least disliked me."

"I don't dislike you," he confirms. He could go into detail about what he dislikes about her, but it feels ludicrous.

She nods and allows him a rare minute of silence. She doesn't like silence. This is her going out of her way for him and he knows it. He lies back down and looks at the turbulent sky.

"You can be civil," she says quietly, after a time.

He just looks at her. Of course he can be civil. It's personable that he has trouble with. Still, an admission of wrongness in thinking from Wendy; rare indeed. He doesn't know her well enough to know if she's trying to get something from him or just furthering her apology. He feels a silly, irrepressible need to further his as well. He allows a minute or so to pass and then changes the subject.

"What do you have in English?" he asks. She likes talking about her grades. This will make her happy, and hopefully, she'll see that he's playing nice, just like her.

"Ninety seven. But there's still a few months left," she says.

"I had ninety five after the exam," he says.

She snorts. "Of course you did. I don't get how you do that." It's a compliment — backhanded, though — and he takes it as such. It's smart kid lingo, which he is not well versed in but accustomed to all the same. She'll come out a few percent ahead of him, as she always does, but the difference between them is that Craig didn't even have to try to get that mark, and she's been working her ass off. If she didn't try, he's sure she'd average in the low nineties, but when you battle with the smart kids, the low nineties are chickenfeed. Between her and Kyle, a ninety one is painfully average, a ninety four acceptable, and anything above a ninety seven is worth grudging respect. He's seen them in class together, holding test papers, exchanging marks, and that twisty little smirk that appears when one beats the other.

He wonders sometimes if he could beat the two of them if he put some effort into his work. God, they'd hate that; they practice so hard to remember dates and formulas and grammar and he just — remembers it. There's no better way to put it. His brain is well-made for school. All he has to do is keep his eyes open and scribble down what he hears, and it just sticks.

"Do you know what's going on later?" he asks just to fill the air.

"How much later? Like lunch?"

"Just in general."

"There are assorted sandwiches and chicken soup for lunch. I don't know anything about the rest of the day."

He nods. Fine, then. He wasn't expecting much more.

A fat raindrop hits him directly in the tear duct of his left eye. He makes a surprised noise that makes Wendy look over sharply, rubbing the water away under her suddenly concerned eyes. Her usual smile comes back as soon as she realizes he's not hurt.

"So it's raining," he says.

"No shit. You okay?" she asks, scooting over a little.

"I'm fine. It's just water."

A drop hits her on the cheek and trails down like goose poop. She smears it away with some disdain.

"Let's go in," he says, watching a few dark spots grow on his sleeves.

"Yeah," she agrees, hopping to her feet effortlessly. She watches without offering to help as he gingerly stands. He briefly remembers going over to Bebe's house while they were dating and when he had a similar injury, the way she kept offering to help him walk and asking if he was alright, and he how he got bothered by it eventually, keeping his mouth shut only for the sake of romance.

"You good?" she asks.

"Fine," he answers, and she smiles for a second as they turn to flee from the pellets of rain coming down quickly now larger volumes.

Some dickhead has locked the door; either that, or the door locked itself. Craig front door does that sometimes; more than once, it's lead to him breaking into the only lower floor window that opens widely enough to crawl into, a fairly small window in the bathroom, an awkward procedure at best. Nowadays he carries a key.

Wendy bangs on the glass, rain blowing on her back and on the doors. She doesn't bother screaming, but she beats on the glass for what feels like a long time, until finally Kenny saunters over, grinning. Wendy points to the lock and makes anguished faces. When he just keeps standing there, intentionally useless, Craig smacks the glass and says, "Open the door, fuckface." He flips him off for good measure. Kenny sneers and unlocks the door.

"'Bout time," Wendy grumbles.

"Not so nice out there, hey?" Kenny says, pressing his nose to the glass.

Craig shuts the door behind him and says, "Well done, Kenny. It's raining."

"You shoulda run around awhile! Nothing better than running around in the rain," he says. "You guys are no fun."

"I don't like getting wet, Kenny," Wendy says, pointedly running her fingers through her hair (barely damp).

"Pussy. You're not wet."

"I don't exactly see you sprinting outside," she retorts.

"Ha! Watch me," he says, and he pulls the door open and dashes outside. Craig closes it and watches him, so full of life and energy and running like nothing matters.

_(he's in your heart)_

Wendy sides up to him and says, "It's kind of amazing to watch him. He never stops."

"Like the fucking Energizer Bunny," Craig remarks absently.

They watch him for a few seconds, and she says, "He'll get soaked."

"It's not raining that hard."

"You think he's coming in soon? He'll be out there for a while."

"He's in short sleeves. It's cold. He'll freeze before he gets too wet."

"Suppose," Wendy says. "You just gonna watch forever?"

"I'm waiting for him to slip," Craig says without hesitation.

She snorts a laugh. "Have fun with that. I'm going to go see where everyone else is."

He nods, and she leaves with a wiggle of her fingers that he only sees in the reflection. It's kind of interesting to watch Wendy walk. She always walks with purpose, like she's got important shit to do whether she's finding friends or throwing away a granola bar wrapper or saving the world.

True to Craig's prediction, Kenny comes in after a couple of minutes, shivering and wet but grinning. The rain's picked up, and though he's not soaked, his hair is dripping and he's certainly towel-worthy.

Craig looks at him impassively and says, "Let's go to the room and grab you a towel and some dry clothes."

"At your command, Captain," Kenny says with a salute. The little action tugs the corners of his lips up and he leads Kenny to the room. He unlocks the door with the key card they'd found waiting for them in their room on the first night and grabs one of the clean towels in the bathroom. He throws it at Kenny, who's peeling off his shirt.

"Thanks," Kenny says with one of those flash-bulb smiles. Craig sits on Kenny's bed and looks off to the side while Kenny ruffles his hair dry, occasionally glancing over to catch his freckled shoulders moving. He pats his torso dry, then moves to his bag to find a dry shirt. Craig's eyes follow Kenny's body curiously.

As Kenny's adjusting his shirt, their lines of vision brush. Kenny quickly turns his head to the side in that awkward way that might just be a weird twitch or eyes wrenching away intentionally. Craig can't tell. He's never been good at this shit.

"You done?" he asks.

"Yeah. Let's go," Kenny says. The conversation feels heavier than a simple inquisition about wet or dry.

They throw Kenny's shirt over the shower curtain rod to dry and go back into the common area, and Kenny's eyes are away from his like meeting might mean blindness.

Stan, Kyle, Wendy, and Butters are sitting around one of the tables and are too deep into their conversation for Craig to be able to tell what they're talking about at all. They're saying things like, "See, when that happens, I usually just kind of do what comes naturally, right? Like, what else do you do?" "I tried making conversation, but it got kind of weird. It's just so hard when you can't relate." "But way better than being on the receiving end."

Kenny doesn't bother to break in. He claims one couch and Craig claims the other. Craig listens to them talk for a while, and eventually catches on to that they're talking about comforting people in grief. Stan's co-worker's mother died recently, if Craig's following the conversation right. He didn't even know Stan had a job.

At some point, Kenny walks over to him and shakes his shoulder. "Lunch is ready," he says.

"Oh, good," Craig says, rolling off the couch and onto his feet, carefully avoiding his bad foot. Kenny grins at him.

"You look so pathetic," he says.

"Yeah? You sprain your ankle and try not to," Craig mumbles.

"Lighten up, I'm kidding," Kenny laughs.

Lunch is unremarkable; better than average sandwiches paired with a sort of vegetable soup with more celery than Craig likes in it. Kenny swallows down both without a second thought. After a cursory attempt at the soup, Craig pushes his bowl to Kenny and that disappears as well. Kenny's not a graceful eater. He devours whatever's put in front of him as if it'll shrink the longer he leaves it. He pauses occasionally to wipe the corners of his mouth, but then he's right back into it. Craig is well conditioned to careful biting and chewing from his various orthodontic appliances, and educated in etiquette thanks to his slightly anal-retentive mother. He supposes he's a stark contrast next to Kenny, who has his elbows on the table as he scrapes the bowl for the last drops of soup. Craig discreetly swipes his tongue across the front of his teeth and remembers that he no longer has braces. There's no need to wedge food bits out from behind the wires anymore.

"You hardly fuckin ate, man," Kenny says. "You okay?"

"I had a sandwich," Craig says.

"A sandwich," Kenny deadpans. "That's like, nothing."

"I'm not so hungry," he admits.

"See! You okay or what?"

"I'm fine," Craig says. "Don't know why you care so much."

Kenny laughs quietly and says, "You're my best friend, of fucking course I care."

"Your best friend, huh." Craig looks over to the other table, where Stan, Kyle, Butters and Wendy sit, talking about something animatedly. Kenny follows his eyes and shrugs.

"Best friend isn't like, a reserved title, dude. Maybe if you're Stan and Kyle it is, but I don't really fucking care." Craig looks back, and Kenny's doing that cheeky smile Craig has ingrained in his head. "'Less you want to be my leading lady instead," he adds.

Craig lets the corners of his lips turn up a little. "The Rose to your Jack?"

"The Spock to my Kirk!" Kenny says.

"Spock isn't a lady," he replies.

"Yeah, well, neither are you," Kenny says, sipping his water.

_(flirting we're flirting we're flirting we're)_

He bites the inside of his lip and then lets it go immediately. It's a stupid, stupid habit. He'd like to drop it but it's relaxing in a way, and he allows himself to lightly nip an unwounded area.

"Stop that," Kenny says, tapping his jaw. Craig stops. Kenny must look for it now.

He picks up his retainer from where it sits on the table and snaps it in.

"You're done eating? Really? Come on, man, they're serving cookies. I'm gonna go get some cookies." Kenny hops up and walks over to the serving area. Craig observes his gait, comparing it to Wendy's. It's relaxed, much more so than hers. He bounces a little as he walks, long legs lazily stretching out and retracting. There's an easy confidence in the way he walks. When he comes back, he's holding four large chocolate cookies.

"Double chocolate, man. Don't tell me you ain't hungry," he says, dropping a couple on his plate.

"You aren't hungry," Craig corrects automatically, and Kenny just sort of rolls his eyes. But then there it is; that quirky, do-you-think-you-can-change-me look.

_(to be honest yeah I think I can)_

Right at this moment, with Kenny stuffing chocolate cookies down his throat and looking expectantly at him, he thinks he probably does like Kenny a lot more than he liked his girlfriends. And if he asked right now if Craig wanted to make out, he'd say yes.

But Kenny doesn't ask, he just eats his cookies, and Craig sighs a little and breaks his in pieces and eats them.

Then, Stan gets up and approaches their table, Craig's phone extended in front of him.

"Thanks for that, Craig. Check your messages, okay?" he says as Craig takes it back.

"Yeah, thanks, Marsh," Craig says dismissively. Stan nods and says hi to Kenny, then goes back to his own table. Craig opens his messages and there's a draft written.

_national news is on at 8:30 didn't hear anything weird_

Craig hands it to Kenny to read. Kenny nods and deletes the draft.

"That's alright, then," he says, handing it to Craig.

"Mm." He stuffs the phone into his pocket. "Still, fuck knows if what they did was legal. I don't think it was."

"Me neither. But you said yesterday, right? Nothing we can do about it."

"Oh, speaking of that. Of Wendy, I mean."

"We weren't, but go on," Kenny says, an amused smile on his face. He must think Craig is endearing.

"We both apologized for the fight. She said she was wrong. Weird, hey?" he says, breaking the half of his cookie in half again.

"She apologized? To you? She hates you," Kenny says, eyes wide.

"She thought I hated her too."

"So you don't? That's news to me."

"Jesus," Craig sighs. "Help me put these away."

"I'm just saying, it's not like you guys have ever been like, super nice to each other, or really nice to each other at all," Kenny says, standing and collecting his plate and glass. "You're not that nice to anyone, not even really me, dude."

"Rude," Craig snorts.

Kenny grins. "I'm kidding. You're nice enough to me."

"Thank you."

"Any time, sunshine," Kenny says.

They drop the dirty plates in the bin and go back into the common area, settling on the couches before the other can come back and take them. Kenny pulls his shoes off his feet to expose white socks, grey with dirt and age. He takes up the whole couch, head on one arm and feet on the other, spread out like a tired cat.

And Craig notices he's been staring. He's not sure if he's always done that or if he's just more aware of it now, after discussing the schematics of it all with Joseph. He refocuses his attention to his ankle, and undoes the brace to let it breathe for a while.

"Your foot still okay, man?" Kenny asks.

"I should really be icing it, but it's fine," Craig says.

Kenny nods and rests his head back on the arm of the couch. "You know when group therapy starts?"

"Half an hour, I think," Craig says, glancing at the clock.

"You know what they're doing today?"

"No."

Kenny doesn't reply, instead just staring into space like there's something on his mind. He gets up and walks over to the bookshelf and grabs the pack of cards Craig left there yesterday.

"Hey," he says. "You wanna play Blackjack?"

"All we ever play is Blackjack," Craig says.

"It's the one I can remember best. You're just moody cuz I keep beating you at it," Kenny teases, shuffling the deck clumsily.

"You do not. You're shit at cards. You can't even shuffle," he says, eyeing the cards in his hands that are trying to spill out onto the floor.

"You do it, then," Kenny snips, thrusting the messy handful of cards at him. Craig takes them, neatens them, and shuffles them easily and quickly, and deals. Kenny sits down cross-legged by his feet. People come in leisurely from the dining area as Craig wins games and Kenny loses games.

Craig's lost count of the games he's won and Kenny's at a triumphant three when the announcement comes on, calling them down the group therapy room. Kenny insists he probably won the most games and that Craig's probably just hallucinating or something, and he goes on and on about it until Craig starts laughing.

_(reasons you like Kenny; he makes you happy)_

Victoria's waiting for them, all the chairs aligned in the usual circle, clipboard on her lap. Nobody says it, but everyone gets the same unconscious shiver at seeing her again, back in her usual environment and away from the horror of yesterday. They choke it down and sit in their usual spots, and Craig notices that they're all avoiding each other's eyes. He glances at Kenny and Kenny's looking away.

"Hello, everyone," she says, laying her clipboard flat on her lap. She's wearing a top that only looks good because of how thin she is. Even if someone like Wendy tried to wear it, it would stress all the unflattering bits of her. But Victoria has no unflattering bits.

"How did you all sleep last night?" she asks.

There are shrugs all around the room. Nobody slept well; there are shadows under all of their eyes.

"Shitty," Kyle says. "I had a really fucking shitty sleep, Victoria. Does that satisfy you?"

She isn't shaken in the least. "The rest of you also seem worn out."

"I read until three in the morning," Wendy says.

"Craig did homework and I rolled around in bed," Kenny says.

"I did homework too," Butters says. "Finished all my Bio work. It was actually pretty good."

"Fuck, you guys were all productive and shit and then there's Stan and I. We just rolled around forever," Kyle says, running a hand through his hair in frustration.

"I slept pretty okay, actually," Stan throws in.

"Fuck you," Craig says, glancing over at him.

"Hey, right back at you, Tucker," Stan snaps.

"Okay, okay. Thank you," Victoria says. "How are you all feeling in general today? Besides tired."

"Good! I ran around in the rain," Kenny says, glancing out the window. "Wow, it's still really pouring, isn't it?"

"It is," she agrees. "How about anybody else?"

"I'm still kinda outta it from yesterday," Butters says. Kenny's eyes dance over to him for a second, pity and empathy on his face. If he didn't know better, he'd guess Kenny was in love with Butters and not himself.

"I'm fine," Wendy says, but she doesn't mention why. Craig could say the same and strengthen their little alliance, but he doesn't bother. It doesn't seem worth it.

"Kyle's fine too," Stan says. "He's just pissed off cuz he could have done homework instead of trying to sleep, and because I slept well and he didn't."

Victoria smiles and says, "Of course. Anybody else have anything to add?"

She's answered with silence and a couple shaking heads.

"Alright, then. Let's get right into it." She shuffles some pages on her board and moves one to the front. "Today, I'd like to talk about the last time you remember not having your phobia. Maybe the last experience you had with it?"

There's the customary beat of silence and then Wendy says, "When I was really, really little, I used to try and hide from my parents when we were going somewhere or when I was going to bed. I wanted them to forget me, and I wanted them to get halfway to where they were going and then realize they'd forgotten me. It was stupid. I was about six when I stopped. I tried to keep playing the game after they forgot me at the gas station, but it wasn't funny anymore. It was just scary." Stan reaches for her hand and she tugs it away, placing it in her lap. She looks bothered and depressed.

"Thank you, Wendy," Victoria says, scribbling down some notes. "Anybody else?"

"There were a ton of b-balloons at the birthday party I went to where I get the phobia," Butters says quickly, as if spitting out the words before they can stain his mouth. "I was playing with them while I was there without fear. But by the end of the party I couldn't look at them. I was six years and five months old."

"Yes. It's quite shocking how quickly they can appear. Thank you," Victoria says, nodding.

"I've always been scared of snakes and hospitals," Stan says. "They're both totally irrational. I don't think I've ever been able to deal with either without freaking out a little bit. And I used to throw up a lot when I was a kid, cuz that's what I did whenever I was nervous. But it never really bugged me until I was, uh—" he looks at Kyle, "fifteen or fourteen?"

"Fifteen," Kyle says.

"Fifteen," Stan repeats. "Since then, I can't even watch it in like, TV shows or games or anything. It gets me. It's just really gross and scary and shit. I can't handle it."

"You've never been able to deal with either snakes or hospitals? Not even as a child?" Victoria asks.

"Never. We had a pet snake in my second grade class, and it always freaked me out. And once my uncle was in the hospital for something when I was a kid, and I didn't visit him. I was too scared. I think I waited in the car."

"And how old were you then?" she asks.

"Maybe seven."

"Thank you for sharing, Stan. Anybody else?" she asks, looking around, the tendons of her neck prominent as she turns her head.

Kyle glances around to see if anyone else is about to speak, and then says, "When I was eight or so, our class went on a field trip to a farm or something. We got to pet horses and stuff, and I was okay with that. I think I even wanted to ride one, but the teacher said no. Then, when I was ten, my mom brought me to one of her friend's house. She had horses and my mom figured I could go visit them when they chatted. I went out, somehow got behind the horse, and it kicked the shit out of me. I've just avoided them since then."

"Thank you, Kyle. How about you, Kenny? Care to share?" she asks, brows cocked like saying no isn't actually an option.

"Oh, um. I guess. The last experience with poison where I was still okay was just before it happened. I was spraying pesticide on this tree outside. I didn't even think twice about it. After I developed the phobia, I still tried to clean and shit, but I couldn't do it anymore. I kept having these awful fucking images of getting sick. Poison's really fucking harsh, man. If there's a nice way to go out, being poisoned isn't it."

"What even happened, Kenny? You always like, carefully avoid actually saying it," Kyle asks, leaning forward on his crossed legs.

Kenny opens his mouth to say something, and then sort of shakes his head, steeling himself to say it. "My sister drank pesticide a few years ago. It was my fault, really, I gave it to her. She got so fucking sick and shitty and I just felt so bad, like I did it to her, and how she should hate me, but she didn't. She didn't even think it was my fault. But she was in so much fucking pain. It was just— fuck. I was so sorry and she wouldn't even let me apologize."

"She drank it, it's not technically you who made her do it," Stan says. "But that really sucks, man. That's hard."

"I gave it to her! Of course it's my fault!" Kenny snaps. Kyle looks away guiltily and doesn't reply. Kenny slumps down in his chair and stares ahead, brows furrowed.

"I used to not mind fog at all," Craig says, pulling the attention off Kenny and onto himself. Nerves seize up in his stomach as eyes shift towards him, but he ignores them and continues. "I thought it was kind of cool, really. When I was a kid I even wanted a fog machine. Every kid wanted a fog machine, though, right? They're cool. So, for my tenth birthday, my dad brought home a chunk of dry ice. I thought that was just the coolest shit in the world, and I was taking videos of it and pictures. That was the last sort of personal experience with it. But when I was thirteen or so, there was—"

_(dangerous territory)_

"Um. Something happened, and I developed the phobia, and since then, I can't even really watch it in movies. It's too fucking freaky. Like that movie _The Mist_? Based off that book by Steven King? I couldn't handle that. It was too much."

He look at the floor. He can feel eyes still on him, watching and waiting, crawling over his skin and his body like tiny little spiders and their endless legs.

"So, the last good experience was when you were ten?" Victoria asks. It feels like she's taken a hammer to the silence. All the shards of it fall sharp-side-down.

"Yeah, pretty much," he mumbles.

"What happened?" Butters asks, eyes big and wide.

"A bad thing. Look, I don't want to talk about it," he says, and the look that follows makes him want to say sorry. But then Butters' face softens.

"It's okay, man. Sorry for asking."

"Thank you for sharing, Craig. I believe that's all of us, now."

"What about you, doc?" Kenny asks, his face melting into a slimy sort of grin. "You must have something you're scared of too."

"This session isn't about me, Kenny," she says.

"So how can you call yourself a therapist if you can't relate?"

"This session is not about me, Kenneth," she repeats, articulating each syllable like it's cutting her tongue. Her face stays still, but the ice in her eyes is enough to freeze a summer day. Kenny glares and shuts his mouth, drumming his fingers on his thighs.

"I'd also like to talk about the first time you realized your fear was clinical. What made you realize that it was more than fear and crossed into phobia territory?" she says, grasping for the poetic. It leaves Craig unimpressed. "Does anybody object to just going around in a circle? No? Good. We'll start with Kyle and go clockwise."

Kyle glowers until Stan nudges him, and they share a sort of wordless exchange. Stan shrugs and Kyle sighs, and then he looks up. "When I was eleven, I watched _Seabiscuit_ with my parents. I have no idea why, since nobody in my family is really into horses or anything, but I don't know, it was just one of those movies that you watch at some point. Anyway, I couldn't watch. I had to leave, I just got too uncomfortable. I kept feeling like I was there, and I kept thinking someone was going to get kicked. You know when you watch a horror movie, and you know something's going to pop out of the dark or something? That's what it felt like. I wasn't really freaking out, but I got really uncomfortable. My parents were really concerned. They took me to a doctor, and he diagnosed me."

"Thank you for sharing, Kyle," Victoria says. "Stan?"

Stan shifts in his seat, buying time to formulate an answer. "I was never formally diagnosed, not for any of them, and none of them really had a moment where it was apparent I had a phobia and not just a hang-up. But snakes and hospitals got worse as I got older. It was like the more I learned about them just by general knowledge, the more reason I had to fear them. If Kelly had made me pet that snake he used in treatment a few years ago, it would have been way easier. And avoiding vomiting also came on slowly. I just didn't think about it until I started like, _really_ thinking about it. Then I started being concerned about how clean my food was.

"My parents and I talked for a long time about me going into this program. We talked about how much better they were when I was young. We talked about how I'm so careful with my food now. We talked for a really long time about everything, and we talked about whether I was being dramatic or if this was a real thing. So yeah, we decided they were phobias like, a week before I registered," he finishes, twirling his hair. It's already looking overdue for a trim, falling in his eyes in shaggy chunks.

Victoria glances around like she's expecting some conversation. When none arises, she says, "Thank you. Wendy?"

"I diagnosed myself," she says, springing right into a clearly thought-out answer. "The turning point I remember was when I was little, maybe going on seven, and I was playing my usual forget-me game. Then my parents pretended to leave by calling out something like, 'I don't see Wendy! I guess we'll just leave!' Then they slammed the front door shut, and something in me snapped, and I ran out from my spot and screamed all the way to the front door. I threw myself out and reassured them I was here and begged them not to forget me, and I think they were confused more than anything. I don't really remember what they said. All I remember was being really scared. Then, when I was maybe fourteen, I looked it up on the internet and got this after some searching. It just seemed right. It is right," she concludes. She folds her hands in her lap and looks around to see if anybody is looking at her. They all are. Out of habit, she fixes her hair.

"Thank you, Wendy. Butters?"

"Ah, I always knew. I googled it once just to double-check, but I always knew it was more than just a hang-up. After the p-party, I couldn't handle balloons anymore. Once, uh, somebody got a balloon for me for my birthday, which was a real nice thing to do, but I started cryin'. And it's always been like that. Whenever there was a grand opening or something that had balloons, I'd start crying or I'd panic or something."

Craig does admire his honesty. He's sure everybody here has cried about it, but nobody ever says a thing about it. Butters doesn't care if they think he's a pussy for crying. Butters probably has more guts than anybody here. He's tempted to say something, but everything he could say sounds awkward in his head. He resigns to staying silent and reflects that Butters probably would have said something anyway.

"Thank you. Very interesting. Kenny?"

Kenny shrugs, and flicks his hair off of his face, still brooding. "After Karen got sick, I couldn't trust myself with anything toxic. I tried to keep using cleaning stuff and whatever, but I just got more and more paranoid. I tried to ignore it, but one day I went to clean the toilet and I passed the fuck out. I fainted. I fucking fainted in front of my toilet. When I woke up, I realized that this was more severe than I thought. I googled it and iophobia came up, so that was that."

"Thank you, that's just fine. Craig?"

"I watched _The Mist_ when I was fourteen. It scared the shit out of me, like more so than a cheesy horror movie should have. I was fucking hyperventilating. I couldn't sleep. My dad was really concerned about it. He took me to see the school counsellor and she suggested I had a phobia," he says. There's more he could have said, more he could have gone into, but he'll save it for Kelly this evening. No need to talk about it all now.

Victoria scribbles a few things on her board and then looks up and smiles. "Excellent. Thank you all, that was excellent. Being able to talk about these things together is an important step in the healing process. We keep our fears so close to our hearts, but they need to be aired out. We need to talk about them to grow. It's hard to say some things to more than a therapist in a soundproof room, but it's very helpful. The more you can talk about, the better results we see."

"You say it like it easy," Kyle mutters.

"I know it's not easy, but it gets better," she says.

"You sound like that LGBT thing that they did a while ago. It gets better! It gets better!" Kenny mocks.

"The more seriously you take this, the better your results will be, Kenny," she reminds him.

"The sooner you learn not to take me seriously, the better my results will be," he says back.

"Don't sass her, Kenny," Stan says.

"Yeah, she don't deserve that," Butters says.

"Wow, Jesus, you guys—"

"Chill, Kenny. It's really not worth getting upset about," Wendy says.

"You'll muss your hair," Craig says, and that grabs Kenny's attention. His face twists into an amused smile.

"That's right. Gotta keep my golden locks in line," he says, throwing his head elegantly.

It's funny, really, how well he knows Kenny and how well he knows how to rile him up and defuse him. It's sort of charming, but Craig's not sure how he feels about charming. Charming is more serious than just _nice_.

Victoria gives strays from her usual and gives them a simple project of making anything they want out of Plasticine. Kenny gets to work constructing a car, and Craig makes a lazy giraffe (lying down, because he can't get the neck to stand up straight).

"This is hard," Kenny comments, trying to build a fender.

"No shit," Craig says.

"Really fucking hard," Kenny says. He rolls a little snake and shapes it into a door handle. Craig reaches over and smashes one of the wheels Kenny's made, just for the hell of it. Kenny stares at the smear and scrapes it off the table.

"Dick," he mutters.

"Ass," Craig replies, pleased with himself. He smiles at his giraffe. It still needs spots.

Kenny turns to him and grins, the gap in his front teeth visible. It crosses Craig's mind that he'd have simple and fast braces, could he have afforded them. It seems like everyone in the entire fucking world has nicer teeth than he did.

"I can't sculpt to save my life," he says, picking a piece of Plasticine to make a spot with.

"Neither can I," Kenny agrees. He's looking at his car like he wants to squish it, but it would be a waste, what with the effort he's already put into it.

"Is that supposed to be a specific sort of car?" Craig asks. He knows exactly jack-shit about cars of any sort. The only cars he can recognize on sight are Volkswagen Beetles his dad's Honda Civic, and even then he tends to confuse them with other generic small cars. This, paired with the fact that he has very little interest in cars in the first place, makes for a poor base of knowledge.

Kenny looks at him like he's never heard such a ridiculous question and says, "It's a 1960 Mustang. Come on, man! You've gotta at least know what a vintage Mustang looks like."

"They kind of looks like every other car to me," Craig says, pressing on more giraffe spots.

"Blasphemy!" Kenny says, which teases a smile out of Craig. Kenny laughs and begins to make a new wheel.

_(it's nice isn't it)_

_(to talk to somebody who speaks an entirely different language than you)_

_(who are we kidding? certainly not joseph he saw right through you)_

He focuses on his giraffe and doesn't bother to finish his thoughts with the statement that's sure to come next.

* * *

Dr. Kelly goes through their sessions alphabetically by last name. First Kyle goes, then Stan, then Kenny and so on. Each session is half an hour and they never go longer or shorter. You sit with Kelly for a half hour and that's that. It doesn't matter if you talk or you don't talk. They start at 7:00, and with a half hour for everyone, they're all finally done at 10:00, giving them all an hour together before the nurses shoo them off to bed.

Craig doesn't mind being last in the least. He's an evening person, and thinks better as the night settles in. The peace that comes with it, the way everyone winds down relaxes him and clears his mind. Words come easier.

"Wendy should be back soon," Kenny says, glancing at the clock. It's 9:26, and she's done at 9:30.

"Mm," Craig hums, reading over some notes. His math teacher gave him a bundle of work to do while for the week he's missing, and he's slowly making sense of it. He's good at math, but trying to figure out a page of numbers and examples without having someone standing there and telling you why they work is significantly more challenging.

"He'll ask about treatment," Kenny says.

"I know. He told me."

"Ooh, that's just great, then. What are you gonna tell him?"

"As little as I can while still satisfying him," he replies, scribbling down a problem. It has a comical amount of fours. He wonders if the people who make up these worksheets try to have fun with them.

"I didn't know you were that easygoing," Kenny scoffs.

"I'm not. But if I don't give him what he needs, he'll never stop asking about it."

"There's no point in saying it all upfront, though. Then you have to spend the rest of the session talking about other stuff."

"It's an art, really. Saying no more than you need to while still using up the whole time period," Craig says, slumping over his work. The question of many fours isn't working out and he hasn't a clue why.

"There's not much to say, though. Just tell him you were scared and tripped."

"It's not that simple, though. I saw something — a person or something — and I just freaked. I ran too hard and I tripped over my feet," he says.

"Oh, shit. That's weird, man. You gonna tell him that?" Kenny asks, wide eyed.

"He already knows, but he'll want me to talk more about it."

"Great," Kenny sighs. He crosses his arms and lays his head on them like they're a pillow and not just arms. In a change of topic, he says, "How's the homework?"

"Dumb," Craig replies. "I give up."

"You're smart, you'll do the thing," Kenny says, his words encouraging but his tone simply tired. Kenny is not an evening person the way Craig is. He gets slow and sleepy, and starts trying to cuddle. When he comes over to study for finals, it ends up being less cooperative reviewing and more Craig reviewing while he wears Kenny like a duvet.

_(when nobody touches you it's nice to be held like that)_

Wendy comes back looking tired, bags under her eyes becoming more pronounced, and says, "You can go, Craig."

He cleans up his homework and tucks the pages into his textbook. He shoves it over to Kenny.

"Look after that," he says.

"Can I copy your work?" Kenny says, opening it disinterestedly.

"No. It doesn't make any sense anyway," he says, shaking his head.

"You suck. Have fun with Dr. Fuck Me," he says. "And don't bite your lips, okay? They look bad."

"Yeah, sure," Craig groans, raising a few fingers in a vague wave.

He wishes Kelly would get a new office. Normally, he likes blue, but the purposely soft walls irritate him for some reason or another. It's like they're saying, "Our walls are soft like butter so you don't have a violent reaction," which is a perfectly acceptable reason, but it still bothers him, the assumption that the colour of the walls has anything to do with how he feels. There are scientific studies into colour and how it affects emotions, and he read that blue is calming, but that's not the point. It bothers him.

Today, he wants to claw all that stupid pigment from the walls, because Kelly's voice is ringing in his head like a fire alarm. It's loud and abrasive and it makes him want to throw up and scream at the same time, even though really he's talking in his usual soft voice. But it won't stop, and that's all Craig wants — for it to stop, just for a moment.

He's asking about yesterday's treatment. Craig knows he promised to talk about it, to give Kelly the reaction he missed, but god, it's not coming easily and he's agitated as hell.

He wants to rip that gentle, mocking paint off the walls and paint it something loud, something to match the noise in his head. Wide yellow and black zigzags, maybe; he could convince Victoria that it's a creative project.

"Craig, here," Kelly says, opening his desk drawer and pulling out a knife and a small plastic box, maybe the size of a couple decks of cards. He opens it up and hands both to Craig. "This is honeycomb. Cut a piece off and chew on it for a while. I asked one of the nurses to get some yesterday evening to give you an alternative to your own lips."

Craig removes his retainer, then cuts a piece and sticks it in his mouth. After the honey comes out, he's left with a firm, waxy ball. It's not the same pleasure as biting his lips, but it's something to chew, and he's thankful for it, really. It's a bad habit and he knows it.

"Thanks," he murmurs after a minute.

"I thought that might help," he says. "I find it quite pleasant to chew on."

"Mm."

"Now, I want to go back to where we were. Can you tell me about the figure you saw?"

He chews on the wax for a minute, flattening it on the roof of his mouth and then shaping it into a haphazard ball. "It was a girl, a little girl. Couldn't be more than eight."

"Do you know this girl?"

He bites the wax in half. "Yeah."

"Where from?" Kelly asks, eyes sharp and focused.

"I was thirteen. We met on a road trip," he says, and the only reason the words come easily is because he's repeated them in his head a dozen times today.

"How?"

"We kind of just — we just slammed into each other," he stutters, even though he's practiced these words too.

"Like on the street?"

"Sort of."

Kelly knows he's leaving something big out of the picture. Craig can't meet his eyes. There's too much expectation in them, too much expectation that he can't live up to.

"Do you know her name?"

"No," Craig says. "I don't know a thing about her."

"Can you tell me why she's significant, then?"

_(not even if I wanted to doctor)_

He chews on the wax and doesn't make eye contact. Kelly doesn't let the question drop.

"She's the reason I have nebulaphobia," he says eventually.

Kelly nods, like he expected that. The self-assuredness on his face prods further at Craig's gut. "Tell me more. What did she do that gave you the fear of fog?"

_(she didn't do a thing she was just there)_

_(wrong time wrong place)_

He leans forward and places his head in his hands, rubbing his temples, pushing the beeswax aside and biting his lip lightly.

"Craig, I know it's hard. But it would be very helpful for us if you could share a little bit."

"Give me a second," Craig snaps.

_(you're going to remember it?)_

_(go through all that again?)_

_(the road the fog the girl all out in the middle of nowhere)_

_(you in the passenger seat)_

"Kelly, I can't talk about it, okay? It's bad and shitty and it scares me," he says, running his hands through his hair and lifting his head.

"We're here to talk about the things that scare you. It's okay. You can talk about it," Kelly says, the look of interest on his face only barely masked with gentle concern.

"How thick are you? I can't fucking talk about it."

"Craig, it would be really useful, and it would help you—"

"My dad fucking hit her with our car, okay?" he snaps, looking away as he says it. There. It's out. He bites his lip hard to stop the tears that want to come. He can't help it; he hates it, and it makes him feel weak and broken, but thinking about it brings out the scared thirteen-year-old Craig who jumped out of the car and ran off down the road, heart beating on overdrive, trying to pretend that it all didn't happen. It brings back Thomas Tucker walking towards him, eyes dead and cold. It brings back the weeks where he woke up in cold sweats, sobbing into the sheets and trying to be quiet.

It brings back much too much. He pulls his knees up on the chair and tucks his head into them. If he can't stop the tears than he can at least hide them.

Kelly looks only vaguely surprised, but it's impossible to tell if he's more surprised and just good at hiding it or if he was expecting something like that. He waits for Craig to speak again.

"See, you fucker, I can't tell you because it's fucking illegal," Craig says, voice strangled, stretched and broken the way it always is when he cries.

"Craig, what you tell me legally cannot leave this office. But you have to tell me two things; was it an accident, and has anything like it happened since?"

"The road was foggy, we couldn't see shit. She just came out of nowhere and — we hit her," he coughs out. "It's the only time it's ever happened. I'm not a fucking murderer!"

"I know you're not," Kelly says. "I don't think you're a threat at all."

"Well, thank fucking god," he bites.

Kelly hands over a box of tissues and gives his a moment to clean up. He does so quickly and quietly, breaking off another chunk of honeycomb at the same time. The repetitive action of chewing calms him down.

"What did you do with her?" Kelly asks after a while.

"We put her in the trunk," Craig says, voice shuddering. "We drove until we found a town and we bought a shovel, and we drove as far out of town as possible. We went way up in the mountains. Then, we pulled off the road, and my dad picked her up and walked into the forest for ten minutes or so until we found a spot he thought was — suitable." He has to choke back _a spot he thought was good_, because it certainly wasn't a good spot. That little clearing they stopped in will never be good.

"Then, we dug a huge hole, dropped her in, covered it up, covered it with pine needles and shit, and then we left," he says. It sounds so easy and simple like that. It doesn't sound horrible and traumatizing.

"Were you on a road trip?" Kelly asks.

Craig nods. "We were coming back from visiting my dad's sister — my aunt — in Utah. She lives out of the city. It was a lot of mountain driving. Not a lot of cars around. It's a long drive, but we thought we might check into a motel for a night, cuz it was getting late."

"Do you know why that girl was out on the road?"

He nods again. "The road was on a cliff. Not a huge or super steep cliff, like I could climb down or up it if I wanted, but still enough to definitely kill you if your car went over. There was a campground at the bottom. I guess she just climbed up for an adventure or something when her parents weren't looking. We would have brought her back, but she was dead as soon as she hit the ground." That's the sentence that drains him. There are no tears left, no anger; just loneliness and soul-crushing emptiness, and the combination of both makes being alive seem pointless. That little girl, dead as she hit the ground — it makes him feel so empty and lonely.

"What happened next?" Kelly asks.

Craig glances up and answers absently, "Nothing. There were missing notices, but I don't know if they were for her. It was just another little girl's face photocopied onto printer paper and hung up in police stations and post offices."

He bites the wax in half and says, "We buried her in the middle of nowhere. You'd have to know exactly where you were looking to find her."

Kelly nods.

Craig stays quiet, alternating between chewing wax and his lower lip. Kelly notices but doesn't say anything about it. There's not much to say to someone who just admitted that one of their life experiences was burying a little girl.

"It scares me to think about," he says quietly. "And it really makes me not want to live anymore. Not really in a suicidal way, but more in an I-don't-want-to-exist-anymore way."

"Yes, I understand," Kelly says.

"It's survivor's guilt, too. I never wanted to end a life. Her parents don't even know where she is. They don't even really know she's dead. It's been four years, but you never know. I'd lose hope, but somebody like — Butters, I guess, or Stan, or Kenny, or someone like that — they'd still have hope. And that would be really fucking hard. It's hard enough on me, and she's not even my kid. It must be hell for them."

"Yes, it would be hard."

There's a silence between them for a few second, in which Kelly's eyes never falter from Craig's face, and Craig shifts uncomfortably. When he finally meets Kelly's eyes, he says, "You wanted history. You got history. What the hell more do you want?"

He doesn't skip a beat. "Tell me how you felt when you saw her in therapy."

Craig sighs, mutters general obscenities under his breath. He lists, "Scared. Panicked. Numb. Thirteen."

"I don't suppose you can go into depth," Kelly says.

"How much deeper can I get?" he says. "I was scared and panicked and I tried to bolt but I tripped, so that was that. I was on the fucking floor and there was static and just static and I couldn't hear anything else. Seeing that figment just reduced me to my snivelling, traumatized thirteen-year-old self. And that was freaky. Too freaky, really," he mumbles. "Thirteen wasn't good. Fourteen was better. Fifteen was okay. Sixteen was fine."

"How about seventeen?"

He smiles thinly. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"So, worse?"

"The worst of them all," he says.

Kelly nods, then looks at the clock opposite his desk. "Looks like we're out of time. Feel free to go, Craig."

Craig's not sure he's ever left a room faster than that, even on a bad foot. It's all he can do not to slam the door behind him as hard as he can and just run.

_(you're doing it again)_

_(you can't just keep running away)_

He looks down the hall that leads into the common area and considers sliding right by and just going to bed. It's 10:00, a perfectly acceptable time to go to bed. He's not going to sleep tonight; at this rate, he might as well just hide and do more of that fucking homework. Kenny still has that homework. If he wants it, he has to interact with somebody else at least a little bit.

He wanders over to the bathroom right outside the group therapy room (which is also in Kelly's hallway) and goes in to check his face. Thankfully, the redness has gone down mostly, and his eyes aren't badly bloodshot. He just looks tired, just like everyone else who leaves therapy with Kelly.

Do they all cry?

Oh, what an immensely sad thing to consider.

People are littered around the common area like confetti. It's sort of sweet, actually, the way they all look so tired and so done with everything. It's not sweet at all, really, but at first glance, they make for a nice landscape, bodies strewn like boulders. A sleeping pill ad could use them rather effectively.

He sits in a chair next to Kenny, who apparently hasn't moved since he left.

"Hey," he says, nudging his shoulder. Kenny raises his head sleepily.

"Hey! You're back. You look really tired," he says.

"I know. It was tiring."

"Really, I was just waiting for you to come back so I could go to bed. I'm so fucking tired, man. I need some real sleep."

"Sure, let's go. Is everyone else still alive?" he asks, standing and gathering the homework he left in a neat pile when he left.

"Barely. I think they're all dozing. One of the nurses can drag them to bed at eleven."

"Let's go," Craig says again, and Kenny stands slowly, stretching his long body as he does. Craig follows him as he ambles off to their room, legs rising and falling heavily, like they're not body parts but rather sandbags. And yet even in this weary state he's interesting to watch. His limbs look like they only barely fit together, and that he's floating along rather than walking. The effect is somewhat ethereal.

Kenny, the keeper of the key card, swipes it and the door clicks open. He gets the door for Craig with a cheeky, "Ladies first," and locks it behind them.

Craig lays books out on the bed and lies down next to them.

"Kenny, I don't want to do any more fucking math," he calls.

"Sho don't do it," Kenny says, walking out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth.

"It's fresh in my mind."

"What de ell?" Kenny darts back to the bathroom and spits. "You said you don't wanna do it. Then you argued to me why you should do it."

"I should do it, I just don't want to," Craig says, rolling onto his back.

"To procrastinate or not to procrastinate," he says, sticking the toothbrush back into his mouth.

"You're the worst roommate," Craig says.

"Why? Cuz I won't do your maff?" he muffles.

"Yeah."

Kenny walks over, scoops up the homework, and drops it on the floor. "Proflem solfed."

"Go spit," Craig says.

Kenny does, and comes back saying, "You know, you should really just go to bed. You look all shaken up."

"Do I?" Craig sighs.

"Yeah, you got red eyes," he says. He doesn't say _red crying eyes_, which Craig is thankful for.

"Okay, okay." He gets up and goes to the bathroom to spit out his retainer and brush his teeth. Kenny wanders back into the bathroom and brushes his teeth in front of the mirror, and Craig wanders out and paces aimlessly around the room. The door closes and he hears the water run for a while.

Kenny comes out after a few minutes and says, "You've been wandering around for like, five minutes."

"Habit," Craig says.

"Did you just swallow your spit?"

"Yeah."

"I can't stand that. Too gross," he says.

"But you'll swallow—"

Kenny looks at him and breaks into a grin. "You gonna finish that sentence, buddy?"

"Nope, definitely not," Craig says, walking past him to rinse his mouth in the bathroom.

Kenny laughs loudly from the other room.

"Immature," Craig scoffs.

"You started it!"

"What happened to tired? You look fucking ecstatic," he says, going back into the main room.

"You made a joke. Of course I'm ecstatic," Kenny says, still grinning.

"Oh, shut up. I'm regretting saying that already. Not to say it isn't true, though."

"No way, dude, my gag reflex is shit. And I dunno, really, I've never given head."

"The one-night-stand kid that you slept with didn't want a blowjob?" Craig asks. "That's shit, I'd want one."

"I dunno, man. We fucked and that was about it," Kenny says, shrugging.

"Seems sad."

"Hmm?" Kenny looks over. "How so?"

"I don't really know. It just seems sad to have sex with somebody you don't know or care about, or want to even see after the fact," Craig says, moving his books onto the side table. "That sounds cheesy, sorry."

Kenny doesn't reply. Craig looks over, and there's something in his eyes; that same curious looks.

_(do you think you can change me)_

_(he thinks you can)_

"I'm going to go to bed," Craig says.

"Do you wanna make out?" Kenny asks.

_(oh!)_

"Uh—"

"Sorry. Wow. I'm a loose fucking cannon," Kenny says, looking down. "That's fucking twice now, isn't it."

"You never apologize to your friends when you make comments like that to them," he says, sitting on his bed.

Kenny blinks, suddenly and unexpectedly caught. He does not recover smoothly. He doesn't really recover at all. He just starts peeling off his shirt and saying, "I'm gonna go to bed, okay?"

"I'd make out with you, though," Craig mumbles, not sure if he wants to even be heard.

"What?" Kenny says. He lets go of his shirt and flattens it back against his chest.

"Don't make me say it again. You heard me."

Kenny just stares at him for a few seconds, nervous and unmoving. The tension in the air is unbearable.

He steps around his bed and crawls on top of Craig's bed, scooting closer to him, mussing the blankets. Both are close, the space between their faces under a foot. A short distance, but oh, so completely impassable.

"Are you, um," Craig murmurs, unable to finish his sentence.

Kenny leans forward a little more and kisses him hesitantly, ready to jump away at the very twitch of discomfort. The kiss ends quickly, and Kenny moves back to recreate the space between them, perhaps a little too fast.

"Okay?" he asks.

Craig nods. "Okay."

"Can I—?"

Craig shifts forward and kisses Kenny for real on the mouth, lips moving against his. Kenny makes a small noise and kisses back, moving closer as well until they're as close as they can get without lying down. Mouths open slowly and lips part and tongues brush, and the only thing that could have made it better was if both of them didn't taste like toothpaste. But does someone else's mouth ever truly taste good?

Kenny loops an arm around Craig's neck, lying back slowly until Craig's on top of him. It always sort of amazes Craig how easy it is, to kiss someone so their body shakes and they'd be willing to maybe give everything to you. He wants to hold Kenny somehow, but wouldn't that be too — intimate?

_(you don't call this intimate?)_

He lets his hands settle on Kenny's ribs. There. That's fine.

When they finally break apart, Craig rolls off of him and lies next to him. Kenny runs a hand through his hair and sighs.

"That was nice," he says.

"Mm," Craig hums.

"You liked it?" Kenny asks, shifting onto his stomach and propping himself up on his elbows.

"Yeah." He could say more and he could say less; this feels like enough, though. More words will come later, he supposes.

Kenny nods, unsure what else to say that wouldn't sound too bold. There's emotion on his face that Craig can read too well. He wonders if it's on his face too.

"I think I'm actually going to go to bed now," Craig says. There's still tension in the air, but it's a different tension. It's almost as choking as the last kind.

"Oh, right," Kenny says. He slides off Craig's bed and goes back over to his side of the room, where the sheets are still neat and not imprinted with moving bodies.

Craig lets his hoodie fall off his arms and tugs his shirt over his head. He can tell Kenny's looking, but it seems frivolous to point it out. He knows he's looking.

Now, just in jeans, he starts pulling out all the corners that whoever comes in and cleans like to tuck under the mattress. Who can sleep, having their toes squeezed by sheets pulled taut?

He doesn't notice Kenny moving, but he's suddenly behind Craig. He kisses the top of his head.

Craig glances behind him. "What was that for?"

Kenny shrugs, looking a little embarrassed. "Felt unfinished."

That tiny little peck and those two words say more than any amount of making out ever did. The running hands said nothing, the lips said nothing, the fucking tongues and spit shared and awkward broken sentences said nothing. But those two miniscule actions unlock the gates and rivers of emotion and meaning roar out loud enough to make Craig's head hurt.

How does one reply to such a torrent of words unsaid? Craig has no idea. He's never been good with things like this. There are things he could say, but each response played over in his head sounds worse than the last. Before too much time passes, he turns his head and smiles, just enough for Kenny to see. He can make his own meaning out of that.

_(just please understand)_

Kenny strips down to boxers and Craig shuts the light. The air is still heavy but Craig finds a way to breathe, and does so until the room fades and the silence of night becomes the silence of sleep.

_(and the scream of dreams)_

_Thomas Tucker has always been partial to the music he listened to in his youth. He has no interest in poking at what those names he's heard his kids toss around make and call music. He's happy in his Elton John CDs, Steely Dan and Stevie Wonder._

_Craig doesn't listen to this music on his own time, but he never remembers to charge his iPod for car trips, and besides, he doesn't mind listening to these oldies that he knows all the words too. Neither of them have good voices, but they both mumble along to _Aja.

_We're not going to be home before midnight, Craig says, looking out the window at the already darkening sky._

_No, I thought we might just check into a motel, Thomas says._

_Seems dumb to leave Mandy's house just to pay to sleep somewhere else, Craig says._

_The drive to my sister's house is a lot to cover in one day, kiddo._

_I wouldn't mind._

_Craig likes car trips. He likes looking out the window and listening to his dad's old CDs, and he likes watching mountains turn into rolling hills, forests to cityscapes. The bumps and easy turns of the road lull him into half-sleep._

_Where are we? he asks. _

_Utah, Thomas replies._

_Thank you, I had no idea._

_Don't snip at me, he scolds._

_Craig shrugs, looks out the window._

_Can't see shit, he says._

_Watch your mouth, I don't want you developing that habit and then slipping in front of your mother. It's mostly mountains. Not much up here besides campgrounds and road._

_When do you think we'll be at the next town?_

_Thomas shrugs. Maybe an hour, he says._

_You could go faster than forty, Craig says._

_I said don't snip at me. And that's not a great idea; look at that fog, kiddo. The visibility's terrible._

_Could we stop? I want to run around in it a little._

_No, I don't want you on a road this bad._

_I'd stay on the side, Craig says._

_I said no, Craig. Settle down._

_I am settled, he mutters, leaning back towards the window. They're quiet for a while, no words passed besides lyrics to _Deacon Blues, _half-sung, half-murmured._

_Fuck, I picked a bad time to drive. Pardon my French, goddamnit. It's getting dark, too, Thomas says, voice thin with stress. Craig doesn't really understand the problem. It's not like anyone else seems to be on the road, and his dad seems to be driving fine._

_Should we turn around? Craig says, turning down the music a little._

_No, it's just as far back the other way._

_It feels like one of those times where no matter what Craig says, it'll be wrong. He keeps his mouth shut and looks out the window while Thomas mutters to himself._

_Dad, relax, he says finally._

_I'm relaxed, Thomas says._

_You're definitely not._

_Thomas doesn't reply, eyes focused on the road. His patience is waning._

_Craig carefully turns the music back up a few notches, leaning back in his seat and looking out the window. The fog's pretty, really, as it gently swirls around the vehicle and the guardrail. There's a forest on the low side of the mountainside they're driving on, but Craig can't make it out. A road sign advertising an RV campground floats by, the mist wispy around the letters. A solitary car, the first they've seen in fifteen minutes, worms out of the fog and passes like a ghost. The headlight are like a beacon in a storm, but they're gone as fast as they came._

_Hey, that looked kind of—_

_Oh fuck! Thomas shouts, and in that split second as the words leave his mouth, the car drives into something solid that flies a few feet in front of them on contact. He slams the breaks and the car screeches to a stop, and Craig looks up but neither is quick enough. In a second's time, the windshield is cracked and the car is stopped. _

_What the fuck did you hit? Craig says, breath suddenly short and heart going triple speed._

_I don't know. Stay in the car, I'll be right back, he says, throwing the door open and jumping out. Craig stares out the window, not entirely sure what he's going to see. Thomas lumbers out and crouches in front of the car, just out of view. After a minute, he stands up and walks back to his side._

_Craig, listen to me. I want you to close your eyes, and don't open them until I say so, he says, voice suddenly shaking._

_What the fuck did you hit? Why do I have to close my eyes? Craig asks, panic beginning to bubble in his stomach._

_If you pick one time to listen to me, pick now. Shut your eyes, Thomas snaps._

_Craig does, because there's no other option. He's sure he doesn't want to see whatever it is that his dad hit._

_He can't hear anything for a minute, and then the trunk of the car opens. Something is heaved into the car. Then, after what feels like a long time, the trunk closes. Thomas sits down, face far away._

_What did you hit? Craig shouts, snapping his eyes open even though his dad hasn't said so yet._

_He turns slowly and says, Craig, I wish I was joking. We hit a little girl. She was crouching, just moved to stand up as we were on her. She broke her neck when she hit the ground._

_Craig's mind stops. All the fast breathing, the heartbeat threatening to leap through his skin, the racing thoughts turning further towards the worst case scenario — they stop and all that replaces is a steady buzz of silence and static._

_She's dead? he manages to work out. Of course she's fucking dead. His dad all but said it just like that._

_Thomas sighs and buries his face in his hands. Craig, I'm so, so sorry. I can't believe this is happening._

_You put her in the _trunk?_ Craig cries. There's a dead girl in the fucking trunk?_

_Thomas doesn't reply for a long while. When he lifts his head from his palms, he says, Craig, if I report this, I'll be charged with manslaughter._

_That's fucking insane!_

_I know it is! Thomas snaps. I have a plan, though. It's a horrible plan._

_What? Craig asks, and he notices now that there are tears running down his face. He wipes them and stifles a choking cough._

_Another long silence. We're going to get to the next town and when we get there, we're going to buy a shovel. Then, we're going to go way up into the forest until we're further away than anyone will drive. I'll pick her up, and we'll walk through the woods until we're off the road. We'll dig a hole and we'll give her a proper burial._

_That's horrible! We can't just fucking leave her in the woods!_

_Do you have a better fucking plan? he shouts._

_Craig shakes his head quickly and breaks down into huge, coughing sobs that wrack his whole body._

_Come here, Craig, Thomas sighs. He reaches over and pulls his over, hugging him with his huge arms. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. _

_It passes Craig's mind that Thomas should be apologizing to the girl in the trunk, not him. But now, none of his body parts are functioning well enough to try and make that argument._

_The next few hours happen behind Craig's notice, and when he lapses back into a more conscious state, they're way up in the mountains, driving along some shitty cracked road, sky black and dotted with stars obscured by the tall pines. He wants to ask where they are, but his dad's eyes are distant and he's lost in thought and shock. They drive and drive for what feels like years, and then, they pull off the road._

_This will do, Thomas says. Stay in the car._

_No, I'd rather come, Craig says. Thomas sends him a weary, anguished look, but doesn't try to stop him. He gets out of the car and goes around to the back to open the trunk. Craig follows him into the chilled air and doesn't look into the trunk. His dad hands him the shovel, still shiny and new, price tag stuck to its handle._

_Craig averts his eyes when Thomas lifts the body out._

_How are we going to get back? It's pitch black out._

_Thomas gives him a look and says, I picked up a flashlight, kiddo. Were you asleep?_

_I guess, Craig says._

_We won't go too far from the car. We'll just get behind those trees there._

_They end up walking for five minutes or so, with Craig marking trees occasionally with the blade of the shovel. It won't mean much if they were to become lost, but it eases some jittering part of his mind._

_Here. Here's good, Thomas says, stopping in a clearing._

_Craig looks around. It's perfect. Not too big and not too small, with a view of the stars overhead. They'll ruin its perfect state as soon as the shovel bites the ground. Even when the dug-up ground grows weeds and pine needles fall on it and maybe another little tree grows, this place will never be perfect again._

_Thomas lays the girl on the ground and stretches his back. I'll take that now, he says, and Craig hands him the shovel._

_What do I do, then? he asks._

_Thomas glances at him. Nothing, for now._

_So that's what Craig does. He sits on the ground, facing away from the body only yards away from him. He counts stars and crumbles pine cones to little bits. He naps as best as he can with his dad's words still bouncing through his mind like a beam of light in a room of mirrors._

_And after some time — a long, long time — Thomas nudges him with his foot. His sleeves are rolled and his body smells of work._

_I'm going to lay her in, now._

_How deep's the grave? Craig asks, standing up._

_Not quite six feet, Thomas says._

_Craig nods, because he doesn't know what else to do._

_Thomas walks over to her, bends down, and carefully lifts her up. Then, he hesitates. I'm not actually sure how to go about this._

_Drop her in, I guess, Craig says._

_You think? I'd rather lower her in._

_How?_

_They stare at each other for a while. Thomas sighs and shakes his head and asks, Craig, I know you're not going to like this. We're going to have guilt for the rest of our lives. I really think it would be better if you helped me lay her down. She's not heavy._

_And even though Craig's mind is blanking, still buzzing with static and now lack of sleep, he agrees._

_He takes the feet and Thomas takes her shoulders, and carefully, they lower her down, letting her go at the last couple of feet. She lands with a hard thud, and it's then that Craig sees her face. Her eyes are slightly open, her mouth hanging. Her clothes are scraped up. Her head is effortlessly bent into a grotesque position. He shines the light on her face and she doesn't move or look back._

_She's dead._

_Craig once saw a dog on the side of the road, hit by a truck. He didn't look too long or too hard — it just made him sad, overwhelmingly sad. Somebody took a life without trying, and now somebody's dead. A dog, sure, but that wasn't the point. The point was that it was dead, and that word becomes heavier and heavier the more he thought about._

_It's never felt as heavy as it does right now. That girl's _dead_. She'll never breathe or feel or smile again, and she'll never see another thunderstorm, or see another movie, or—_

_He throws up, right on the side of the grave. It's too much. Too much. He doesn't feel worthy of being alive. He'd die right now if some stranger could live._

_Oh, god, he chokes out, coughing up another chunk of his last meal. His spit hangs in ropes. It's unflattering, with his tears mixing with his vomit and his face reddening, but that's the furthest thought from his mind. Grief and shock have him in a chokehold and he can't find air to breathe. _

_His dad is on him again, holding him like he's six years old and afraid of the dark, and he's murmuring things but they aren't nice or even comforting._

_I'm sorry, it'll never be the same, I'm sorry, I can't believe this, I'm sorry, I've wrecked you, I'm sorry—_

_I'm sorry—_

_God I'm so sorry—_

_(sorry)_

_(I'm sorry too)_

Craig wakes cold and damp with sweat, breath short and heart and head racing. He looks around and he's still in the hospital room in his hotel bed, Kenny sleeping four feet away, tucked into a little ball, the sheets twisted around him. She's not alive, but she's not here. Here, the door is bolted and window doesn't open. Here, he's safe, and even if he's not safe, there's a kid in the bed across from him who will say nothings until he's created the illusion of safety.

_(he could be your sanctuary)_

_(all you have to do is ask)_

He lies back down and covers his entire body with the sheets, breathing slowly and forcing himself to calm down. He's been at it for a little over twenty seconds (he counts to relax) when Kenny voice comes from the other bed:

"You okay, Craig?"

He doesn't move. He doesn't breathe. He doesn't make a sound until shifting comes from Kenny's blankets, the sound of readjusting and preparing for sleep again.

Sleep is a good idea. But that's all it is; a good idea.


End file.
